


Siren Song

by Adrenalineshots



Category: Prodigal Son (TV 2019)
Genre: Blood and Gore, Case Fic, Gen, Hurt Malcolm Bright, Hurt/Comfort, If this was an episode, Kidnapped Malcolm Bright, Mentions of Cancer, Post-Season/Series 01 Finale, Serial Killers, Team Dynamics, Team as Family, mention of euthanasia
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-12
Updated: 2020-07-20
Packaged: 2021-03-03 20:00:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 32,141
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24681205
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Adrenalineshots/pseuds/Adrenalineshots
Summary: A series of murders haunt New York City. In the wake of the events of the series finale, both Malcolm and the team have to deal with a killer that's too close to their own broken hearts.
Comments: 74
Kudos: 101





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> To the most amazing and wonderful Jameena, goes my most heartfelt gratitude. She was absolutely amazing in both her suggestions, fine comb for mistakes and unbelievable speed! Thank you! You're 99 kinds of awesome!

The salt water slapped against the shore like it was trying to punish the black, gray and white pebbles. Flying overhead at a distance, a seagull screamed for no reason at all other than to let the world know it existed.

  
  


The stench of old fish and fresh sewage filled the air. Or maybe it was just the smell of decay.

  
  


The body had been in the water for over a week and the elements had not been kind. Neither had the killer.

  
  


“From the pelvic shape and the size of what's left of the hands, I would say our victim is a young woman,” Edrisa let out, dryly and professionally. The day was gray and glum, Gil had only just returned from his medical leave after almost dying and the victim looked eerily familiar. Even the quirky medical examiner wasn't feeling up to making jokes. “But I'll be able to tell you more once I have her on my table.”

  
  


The victim had long, blond hair that the salt water had turned a sickening shade of green. Her eyes were gone, as well as most of her fingers. The neon blue polyester fabric that had been sewn to the legs, giving her lower half the shape of a fishtail, was remarkably well preserved. Turned out ecologists were right: plastic does not degrade in the sea, it just lingers there, floating for eternity.

  
  


“Cause of death?” Gil asked, his gaze traveling the length of the body as he searched for obvious signs of violence. There were no indications of any gunshot or stab wounds.

  
  


“Strangulation,” Bright provided before the pathologist could open her mouth. His tone was subdued, devoid of the usual excitement that would surround such an odd case. “Thick jute rope, I would say?”

  
  


Edrisa nodded, not even bothered by the fact that the profiler had stolen her thunder. This wasn't a case where there was any thunder to be had. She wasn't the only one who could see the physical resemblance between the victim and Malcolm's deceased girlfriend. “Bright's correct,” she confirmed. “The victim has neck lacerations consistent with being strangled with thick rope. Also, you can see nail scratches around the rope marks, meaning that she was conscious when it happened,” she added. Her gloved fingers moved towards her own neck, mimicking the clawing motion.

  
  


“So, she was hanged?” JT ventured. It was not something that they often saw in a murder case, but then again, it wasn't often that they found themselves investigating the death of a _mermaid_.

  
  


“No broken neck,” Edrisa pointed out. “So, I would say that someone tied the rope around her neck and gradually cut off her air supply.”

  
  


“What do you think, Bright?” Gil prompted. Met with silence, the Lieutenant looked around, searching. He found the profiler's gaze lost in the sky, rather than in the victim. “Malcolm?”

  
  


“Did you know that seagulls are notorious kleptomaniacs? They’ll steal anything shiny that grabs their attention,” he let out, eyes finally dropping to meet the rest of the team. He was surprised to find them all staring at him, lost and confused. “She's missing an earring,” he explained.

  
  


“Bro, she's missing a lot of things,” JT pointed out, somewhat disgusted. There was something deeply gut churning about a corpse with empty eye sockets. “What makes you think a seagull got her earring?”

  
  


Bright knelt down on the pebbled shore, smooth stones skating from underneath his shoes as he shifted his weight. “It's a stud earring,” he explained, pulling the victim's ear lobe upwards to show the remaining stud. “A fish wouldn't have the strength to pull it out, it would just nibble around.”

  
  


“Maybe the killer kept it,” Dani suggested. For some, it wasn't enough to steal the victim's life; they also felt the need to keep ' _souvenirs_ '.

  
  


“I don't think this killer is after revisiting her kills,” Malcolm voiced, thinking out loud. His knees popped as he got up, straightening his coat as he went. “I think this is all about the killing itself.”

  
  


“ _Her_? You think the killer is a woman?” Gil prompted.

  
  


Bright's head tilted to the side, his eyes filling with sadness. The usually intense blue color of his eyes looked grey and mossy, mirroring the stormy clouds above them and the sicking, green shade of the victim's hair. “The mermaid myth was originally born out of the story of the Assyrian goddess Atargatis, who changed herself into a half-woman, half-fish form out of shame after having unintentionally killed her lover,” he explained. “I believe our killer is doing the same to these women, either because they’ve killed their lovers or, more likely, because she sees herself in them.”

  
  


“Wait... _women_?” JT picked up. “You think there'll be more?”

  
  


Malcolm closed his eyes, breathing in the salt and death in the air. It hardly felt like there was a city just a few yards away, pulsing with traffic and smog. “I think this is just the beginning,” he let out.

  
  


ººº§ººº

  
  


For once in his life, Malcolm wished he'd been wrong.

  
  


The second victim was found a week later. Same shore, same _modus operandi_. Same eerie resemblance to Eve. Young, blond and with sewed-in polyester fins. Unidentifiable. Untraceable.

  
  


“She's been in the water for about a week, same as before,” Edrisa confirmed. “Like the first Jane Doe, she was also strangled. The fins, fortunately sewed in post-mortem, are made from the same material. Common polyester. I looked it up, you can order these mermaid tails online from a bunch of places, really cheap...” she pointed out, her voice dimming away as she caught the judgmental stares. “...for those interested in that sort of thing.”

  
  


“So, she was dumped around the same time we found the first victim?” JT asked, because someone had to. The rest of the team was just silently staring at the victim, stealing casual glances towards Bright.

  
  


For his part, Malcolm was silently nibbling on his thumbnail, eyes glassy as he stared at the victim's blond locks, spread like a halo across the metallic table. Like rays of sunshine, struggling to shine through the mud. Her mutilated face kept morphing into Eve's features, and it was becoming too distracting.

  
  


“I’m not sure ' _dumping_ ' is the right term here,” the medical examiner corrected, pushing her glasses up her nose.

  
  


“I'm sorry- _disposed_ of, ” JT amended, looking neither sorry nor sincere in his amends.

  
  


Edrisa frowned. “Oh, I wasn't correcting your semantics,” she explained. “It's rather that I don't think the killer is randomly throwing these women in the water to get rid of the bodies. There are tides and flows to consider, and yet this victim has washed up in almost the exact same place as the one before, exactly one week later."

  
  


“She's sending them home,” Malcolm whispered. “After they have atoned for their mistakes, she has no further use for them, so she sends them off. I think the idea was to return them to sea, like they're merely lost whales...only the currents keep thwarting her efforts.”

  
  


“Pretty smart way to hide all evidence,” Dani pointed out. Between the bloating and the animals, there wasn't much they could work with. Finger prints had been the first ones to go and comparing a disfigured face to anyone in the missing persons' list was a nightmare in itself.

  
  


“I don't think that's why she does it,” the profiler surmised. His fingers reached for the victim's hair, tucking it in place closer to her head. “A mermaid would suffocate outside the water; our killer does the same to the victims before returning them to their element, the water. Disposing of evidence is merely a byproduct of that.”

  
  


“Wait,” Dani voiced, excited. Malcolm's hand recoiled against his chest, suddenly self conscious of what he was doing. The detective, however, had her eyes glued to her phone rather than his conspicuous actions. “If Edrisa is right, we have a shot at catching this killer when she dumps the next body. We just need to figure out the currents and how far the bodies would travel in the water!”

  
  


“We can't just sit on our thumbs, waiting for her to kill someone else!” Bright let out, his face pale despite his outburst. “We need to find the killer before that,” he went on, his voice dropping close to a whisper. “She's grieving the loss of her lover, who probably died at her own hands. She will have long blond hair and enough physical presence to both dominate and carry these women,” Malcolm explained, his words gaining strength as he dove into the profile. “We need to start looking into recent deaths of men between the ages of twenty and forty. I guarantee you that she was in a relationship with one of them.”

  
  


The silence that followed made the air feel as thick as molasses, sticking to their skin and making them feel uneasy. No one wanted to be the first to point out that Malcolm was too close to the victims to work this case. It didn't take a psychology degree for them to see that the grieving profiler was transferring his feelings for Eve to the dead women, that each time he looked at them, it was his dead girlfriend he was seeing.

  
  


Gil sighed, knowing full well that he should sideline the profiler. It was the right thing to do, according to police rules. But rules didn't really apply to Malcolm Bright. Rules were like the harsh wind of people’s voices, breaking against sharp cliffs of Malcolm’s will.

  
  


“We'll look into it,” the Lieutenant said instead, sharing a look with the others. “In the meantime, Edrisa...we need to identify these women,” he almost begged. Knowing the victimology was half way to knowing their killer, and so far they had nothing. It was grating on his nerves.

  
  


“I'm waiting on the dental records...it takes some time, you know?” Edrisa let out defensively. “I blame all those TV shows....making my work look _so_ easy and fast,” she added with an eye roll. “It's not!”

  
  


“Edrisa...” Gil called out with an understanding look. “We’re racing the clock here.”

  
  


The petite woman nodded, her eyes darting towards the retreating profiler. He hadn't even said goodbye.

  
  


ººº§ººº

  
  


Malcolm was slowly losing his mind. Or maybe he had never had _it_ there in the first place.

  
  


Work was supposed to be his distraction from everything else that was going on in his life at the moment, not an aggravating factor. His sister was still in jail, awaiting a trial that would decide whether Endicott's death was planned or not; his murder investigation was still open, pending further evidence; and Eve was still dead.

  
  


He thought that he had started dealing with her death when Eve stopped haunting his loft. But then the first victim had been discovered and just as quickly, she was back. Only, Eve no longer looked like the ethereal being that he had been seeing before. Gone was the inner light and unblemished skin. Gone was the benevolent hint of a touch upon his skin.

  
  


All he could see now was how she had looked _after_ , lying dead on Edrisa's table. A corpse, a rotting piece of flesh, devoid of everything that made her who she was...devoid of life.

  
  


He had failed to protect Eve, despite his father's warning, despite knowing how dangerous Endicott was...he had allowed his broken heart to speak louder than his mind, and the young woman had ended up murdered.

  
  


And now, somewhere in the city, in that very moment, another woman, just like Eve, someone who had a life, friends, family, a lover...that woman was about to lose her life because they had yet to catch this killer. Because he was failing again.

The media was having a field day with the case. And while they had been holding on to any details pertaining the murders, it had been next to impossible to hide the fact that 'mermaids' kept washing up in New York City 'The mermaid killer' was quite the catching title for most headlines.

They were all assuming it was a man. The NYPD hadn't bother to correct them. The less the killer was informed about their actions and knowledge, the better chance they had to catch her.

  
  


Female serial killers were rare. Harder to catch too, because their reasoning for the killings tended to be more personal, unpredictable.

  
  


Unlike male serial killers, who had a _type_ and tended to stalk and hunt victims that fit that typology, female serial killers kept the murders close to home, often going after people that they knew or socialized with. They gathered them and nurtured them to death.

  
  


In all of his career, Malcolm had dealt with only one other female serial killer. Kristen Doss, a sex worker convicted for murdering fifteen of her clients by slitting their throats. It had been one of the first cases he had worked after joining the FBI. It was also the case that earned him most of the enemies he made at the Bureau because Malcolm had been the only one to suggest that, perhaps, they were dealing with a woman rather than a man, as most of the other profilers had assumed. Turns out, he had been right and they had been wrong. Colette had never quite forgiven him for that one.

  
  


This one, however, stood a world apart from Kristen Doss. Kristen had been searching for revenge over events that had happened in her younger years; this killer was punishing herself, ridden by guilt and shame over events that had happened recently.

  
  


Broken hearts often lead to broken minds. And of those, Malcolm knew all about.

  
  


Bright stared at the white board, the pictures of the two known victims slowly blurring until they became Eve all over again. She was looking back at him, her blue eyes accusatory, silently asking him what he was waiting for.

  
  


Edrisa had finally managed to identify one of the victims, Jane Doe number two. But knowing that her name was actually Susan Briggs only served to give some form of closure to her family. In terms of solving the case, the only lead it brought them was a geographic location. Staten Island.

  
  


There was nothing remarkable about Susan, absolutely nothing that could possibly make her the target of a serial killer with a mermaid fixation. Her husband, Toby, was very much alive, currently grieving the loss of his wife. They had been married for merely three months.

  
  


With only one victim identified and one unknown, Malcolm simply didn't have enough to form a pattern. He didn't even have enough to say that this was the work of a serial killer, despite knowing with every fiber of his being that he was right.

  
  


Notwithstanding the fact that everyone on the team had recognized how fast Malcolm was spiraling out of control, none of them had even considered the notion that he might have been wrong in his profile. He had told them they were looking for a female killer with some sort of recent tragedy in her life and a connection with the victims, and that was who they were looking for.

  
  


It was at once gratifying and terrifying.

  
  


JT was looking into the life of every single female in Susan Briggs’ life. It was a long shot and notoriously tedious work, but if there was even a chance it might pay off, it was work worth doing.

  
  


Dani had spent her days scrolling over the list of deceased men in the State of New York for the past month, flagging any who had left behind a girlfriend or wife. It was like trying to search for a needle in a stack of needles, and by the end of the day she had no answers and eyes that looked like she had been chopping onions for hours.

  
  


As much as it pained him to admit it, Bright knew that Dani's idea of studying the currents and catching the killer red-handed was beginning to sound like the only way they would ever get their hands on this particular killer. But in the mean time, that meant another life would be lost.

  
  


ººº§ººº

  
  


The Northern Atlantic currents could be traced as closely as a subway timetable. Nature had its own internal clock and schedules and, apart from major disturbances to the order, Nature stuck to its plan almost every time. It was more reliable than a Swiss clock.

  
  


The Marine Bureau Police department had lent them a hand in figuring out where and when a body needed to enter the water for it to take a week to reach the same destination as their two previous bodies. It had taken them only a few hours to come up with a few square miles of location and a time frame. Staten Island, Great Kills Park. Sometime after midnight.

Seemed appropriate enough.

  
  


Still, it was a lot of ground to cover in an inconspicuous way. In the end, Gil had broken his cardinal rule and allowed for posts of a single person, every two miles, armed with an earpiece and night vision goggles. No one was to pursue the killer alone, merely spot her and report the location to others. Even with a few uniforms helping them, they were still stretched thin.

  
  


If they missed their chance of catching the killer this time around, they would be forced to wait another week, sacrifice another life. It was something none of them was prepared to do.

  
  


Malcolm sat on top of a dune, shivering. To his right, far away enough that he couldn't spot her even in the daylight, stood Dani. Gil was to his left, occupying one of the lifeguard's posts.

  
  


There was something frighteningly peaceful about the ocean in the dead of the night. From where he stood, all that Malcolm could see was a thin line of horizon where the full moon almost touched the water. In between that narrow spark of light and him, there was nothing but darkness and the powerful sound of water crashing against sand. The seagulls that had kept him company until the sun went down, had long retired to their nests, taking with them their phantom siren calls.

Lulled by the sound of the waves and the gentle breeze that kept pushing sand against his side, the profiler let his mind wander.

  
  


He tried to imagine what could possibly be going through the mind of the killer as she slowly suffocated her victims. Unlike most killers, she was taking no pleasure from the killing itself. There was no sadistic component to her actions, as even the sewn fins were attached after the victims died. There was something deeply sad about the way she cared for the women she killed, how she almost showed respect for them in a very mentally disturbed manner.

  
  


“ _Bright, check in_ ,” Gil's voice erupted from his ear piece, violently bringing him back to reality. “ _Sunrise is in about thirty minutes...you absolutely sure about the profile? Maybe there won't be a third victim..._ ”

  
  


Malcolm rubbed his hands together to regain some feeling on his fingers. “There's a third victim,” he voiced as soon as he pressed the comm. “The moon's too bright...maybe she's going to wait for a darker night to get rid of the body,” he suggested. Dragging a dead body with a fishtail on was not exactly something that would pass by unnoticed. Despite the deserted long stretch of shore, there was always a small risk of coming across someone. Fishermen, early joggers, people working the nearby park...

  
  


“ _Fine...but as soon as the sun puts in an appearance, I'm scrubbing this stakeout off_ ,” Gil announced in the open channel. It was as good as a direct order.

  
  


Bright bit his lip. A small part of him wanted to argue with the older man, cling to the vague idea that she might still put in an appearance. Somehow, it felt like the specific days she placed the bodies in the water mattered. There was a ritualistic feeling to it, one that Malcolm couldn't not clearly articulate enough to explain in a rational manner. And Gil was not about to spend any more hours freezing his butt on a flimsy lifeguard wooden post on what basically amounted to a gut feeling. Especially not so soon after having left the hospital.

  
  


She was coming that night, he was sure of that.

  
  


As the night slowly ebbed into the early beginnings of a new day, the sky rebelled, turning even darker as stormy black clouds started gathering above the ocean. And then Bright heard it.

It was barely there, a faint scuffing sound that could have easily been drowned out by the crashing waves and the distant rumbling of thunder, had he not been listening for it. Quickly snatching his night goggles, Malcolm searched the beach for the sound he had heard. The sound of something heavy being dragged across the sand.

  
  


It took him a few minutes to locate the source. The shiny green fish tail on the victim's legs caught the flashing burst of electricity as lightning connected sky and sea over the edge of the sea. She laid a few feet from the water, her blond spread across the sand like seaweed. Alone. Abandoned.

  
  


The profiler's heart started to race inside his chest, mouth running dry as he realized his mistake a moment too late. He pushed the goggles' lenses against the sand, hiding the faint blue light that they emitted when turned on. In the almost complete darkness of the shore, he must have looked like a lighthouse beacon. “Gil,” Malcolm pressed his finger against the comm, his eyes darting around, searching for any movement. He held on tightly to the goggles, his only weapon. “Gil...I think I've been--”

  
  


A sharp pain erupted from the side of his head, shattering in the same blow his comm device and his grip on consciousness. As the profiler's body hit the sand and was slowly dragged away, the waves kept on crashing down, minding nothing else but their own business.

ººº§ººº


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Big thank you to Jameena, for once more working her magic!

ººº§ººº

  
  


Gil was on the run the second he heard the subtle hint of panic in Malcolm's voice. He vaguely remembered calling out for everyone to converge on the profiler's location as his shoes slipped and sank into the dry sand, slowing him down to almost a crawl. It made him feel like Tantalus, running towards the water that would quench his thirst, only to see it recede from his touch. The more he ran, the further away Malcolm seemed to be.

  
  


His side was beginning to ache fiercely, reminding him of the doctor's orders about not straining his healing muscles. The anger and frustration towards his own limitations only made the Lieutenant run faster.

  
  


He was already too late. Unless he snapped his fingers and immediately made himself appear at Malcolm's side, Gil knew that he would always be too late. They had all heard the fritz of sudden static that followed Malcolm's call. They all knew the sound of a comm being smashed to pieces.

  
  


They all knew what it meant.

  
  


From the other end of the stretch of sand, Gil could see headlights and hear a beach motorbike speeding towards him, its large tires eating at the shifty ground a lot faster than a pair of feet ever could. Every time lightning flashed across the black expanse of the sea, he would catch a glimpse of JT in the front and Dani's long curls dancing wildly behind his shaved head, giving their silhouette a weird medusa-like quality.

  
  


By the time he reached Malcolm's location, only JT's bulkier frame could be seen, his flashlight dancing across the sand, searching the ground. “Any sign of him?” Gil asked out of breath, fishing out his flashlight as well. He aimed it at the wall of darkness that hid everything beyond the first row of sandy dunes,but even the artificial white beams seemed helpless to push the jet black veil back.

  
  


“Pieces of his comm, a couple of blood drops,” the detective pointed out, his features invisible as he aimed his beam at the ground. The light bounced off the metal like it was made of gold. “And drag marks,” he added, moving the beam a few inches left. “Dani is off trying to track them.” His subdue tone gave away how little faith he had on her finding anything in the dark.

  
  


Gil breathed out, his hand reaching for the scar on his stomach. His whole side spasmed in pain, but at least he hadn't been running towards a dead body. “Was this even our killer? Or someone else?” Because you could always trust Malcolm Bright to attract every loon in a square mile, even when he was in the middle of a stakeout.

  
  


“Nah, he was right about the third victim,” JT confirmed, his eyes catching the older man's actions with a hint of concern. “We drove by the body on our way here.” His flashlight pointed towards the beach, catching a passing glint of shiny light green. “Fishtail, just like the other two. We left the boys from the 122nd with her,” he added before aiming his flashlight at Gil's midriff. “You doing okay over there, boss?”

  
  


Gil dropped his hand self consciously. “I'm fine. Just a little winded from the run,” he confessed, pulling off his best Malcolm's impression. Now that he looked closely, he could see the gathering of flashlights down at the beach, surrounding the victim's body. If the killer had been interrupted before putting her in the water, than she would be the first they found who would be undamaged by the sea and its creatures. Which meant that their killer had just made her first mistake.

  
  


But why take Malcolm with her? What could she possible gain from such action?

  
  


With the skies threatening a downpour any second now, they needed to move fast, or else Mother Nature would ruin every piece of evidence. Including their chances of tracking Malcolm. “Assuming that Bright is also right about the gender of our killer, how the hell did she drag him away so fast?” Gil thought out loud. JT and Dani must have arrived at Malcolm's location less than five minutes after his distress call. Even with the sand helping, dragging the unconscious body of a man was not an easy task.

  
  


“Well, he ain't exactly a heavyweight,” JT mumbled under his breath.

  
  


The sound of booted feet, light on the sand, preceded Dani, as she raced back to them. “She had some sort of cart,” the detective breathed out, doubling over, winded. “The drag marks stop short about ten feet from here,” she pointed towards the harbor area, in the opposite direction of the beach. “From there, I followed the two sets of wheels all the way to the road,” Dani said, looking up at them. There was no point in stating the obvious. From the road, she could have gotten Malcolm into her car, and the two of them would already be miles away by then. “He's gone.”

  
  


Like the heavens where waiting for the right moment to open the flood gates, rain started pouring down, immediately soaking everything. Thunder crashed at a distance, feeding the sense of foreboding that was impossible to ignore.

  
  


Gil stared down at the few drops of blood on the sand, like red pearls. Water cascaded over his bent head and down his face, like the weather was trying to mock his sadness with tears of its own. The dry blood became alive for a fleeting moment under the water's touch, before the ground greedily drank it all up, taking with it the last traces of the profiler.

  
  


ººº§ººº

  
  


Legs shifted in water, quiet splashes that barely disturbed the shimmering light dancing across the wet surface. In the distance, tiny paws belonging to tiny, furry creatures scurried away, frightened by the faint disturbance of silence.

  
  


Bright woke up to complete darkness and the sound of a heavy metal band playing inside his head. He was laying on his stomach, face flat against the ground. There was water pressing against his lips, teasing his nose with its feathery touch.

  
  


The profiler jerked up as the foul smell assaulted him. Whatever was in that water, it was not something he wanted inside his mouth. He gagged and spit, helplessly gurgling until he managed to turn ever so slightly and push his face away.

  
  


Malcolm blinked, trying to clear his vision, but the action did very little for him. Instead of complete darkness, he achieved a sort of gloomy murkiness that made everything around him look black and grey.

  
  


Malcolm had no idea where he was, but he clearly remembered who had taken him here. He had seen the killer at the beach, dragging the body of her latest victim towards the sea. Bright could only assume that she had been the one responsible for his cracked head and current predicament.

  
  


His ankles were strapped together and his hands tightly secured behind his back, which made sitting up a task somewhat harder than usual. Malcolm rolled over, taking advantage of the position to take a large gulp of air and rest his aching head against the wet ground. Above him, he glimpsed a concave ceiling, closer than one would expect in any normal room.

  
  


Stomach protesting against the effort, Malcolm slowly sat up, closing his mouth against the bile threatening to spill out. Behind him there was a wall, as curved as the ceiling, stretching on both sides as far as he could see in the bleak light, which, in all honesty, wasn't that much. He leaned against it, willing the dizziness away. As his head thumped against the hollow concrete, the profiler suddenly realized where he was. A tunnel.

  
  


“Hello?” he called out, voice echoing freely through the darkness, bouncing off the walls. “Is there anyone here? HELP!”

  
  


“Mmmmpphhummpp!”

  
  


Malcolm startled at the noise. The muffled sound stretched across the rounded walls, not quite a moan but far from being a word either.

  
  


He wasn't one to believe in ghosts, fully aware of how they were nothing but a byproduct of Mankind's deep-seated longing for immortality, but the sound was eerie enough to bring them to mind. Now that he was looking for it, he could also hear water, splashing around.

  
  


“Who's there?” he asked, shifting his position. No matter how hard the profiler squinted, he could not see the source of the noise.

  
  


“Ummmppphhhgggghhh!”

  
  


The noise was clearly human, like someone trying to speak through a gag, and it was coming from somewhere to his right. Malcolm moved closer, dragging his butt through the dirty water. His hands scrapped against the wall, each gained inch paid in skin from his knuckles.

  
  


The sudden burst of light that filled the tunnel was like a fierce blade, stabbing through his eyes into his brain. Malcolm closed them tightly for a second, his will split between the need to protect his eyes and the absolute panic of not knowing what was happening. He risked a glance.

  
  


There was a young woman, bound like him, leaning against the wall, maybe ten feet away. Her terrified gaze met his over the edge of the gag covering her mouth, blown pupils shifting between his face and the source of the light. Tears welled up in her eyes, and she sobbed against the cloth keeping her silent.

  
  


Malcolm forced himself to stop staring. Already his mind was playing tricks, supplying the details that his eyes could not catch. The golden curves of her hair, the soft blue of her eyes...He shook his head, pushing Eve's image away before taking advantage of the lightened tunnel to take a good look around.

He had been a unfortunate visitor of the New York sewage system a few other times, his job always taking him to the most glamorous places in the city. While the concrete walls looked nothing like the stone and brick he had seen there, the smell was the same. The tunnel they were in was intersected by another on his left, about ten feet away. On his right, there were two more, about seven feet apart. If that place actually belonged to the sewage system, Malcolm figured his odds of finding a way out on his own were less than stellar. 

The person holding the flashlight just stood there, breathing heavily. The profiler wondered if she was trying to decide what to do with him.

It was hard to see past the intense glow of the flashlight aimed at his eyes, but still he could glimpse the curvy outline of a tall woman with long hair. He figured he was looking at their Mermaid Killer. “It's okay,” he let out, wetting his lips as he searched for the right words to say. “I understand why you feel like you have to do this-”

  
  


There was a faint click, followed by a detached, emotionless voice that sounded vaguely female. “ _ Shut up _ .” Another click.

  
  


Malcolm frowned. The tunnel's acoustics gave every sound a vaguely metallic, echoing quality, but still, he was pretty sure that was a tape recording he had just heard. The fact that the killer was hiding both her face and her voice gave him some hope about her intentions to kill him.

  
  


It was the bound woman he was concerned about. From what little he could see of her, she looked exactly like the other victims. Young, blond, helpless. Mermaid number four if he didn't do something about it.

  
  


“You're grieving,” he pressed on. “I can help you.”

  
  


Click. “ _ Shut up _ .” Click.

  
  


The bound woman whimpered, pulling her knees up to her chest. Despite the dispassionate tone of the recorded voice, the repetition was clearly putting the distressed woman on edge. It was clearly something that she had heard before. Which begged the question: how long had she been there?

  
  


It was impossible to determine the killer's state of mind when all of her interactions were borrowed from a tape, but Malcolm knew that he had to connect with her somehow. Physically she had the upper hand, standing over him with a light shining directly into his eyes and having his hands tied behind his back. He could try to jump her, but he would never be able to move fast enough to catch her by surprise. Besides, there was no telling what weapons her vague silhouette might be hiding.

  
  


“I recently lost someone too,” he tried again. “I loved her and she died...because of me,” Malcolm whispered, knowing that if there was anything that could move the killer, it was the absolute truth. Still, it hurt to voice his failures. “I was too naive, too stupid to do something about it, and she di-”

  
  


Click. “ _ Shut up _ .” Click.

  
  


“It wasn't your fault that he died,” Bright insisted, despite the command. “You don't have to bla-”

  
  


The scream the killer let out was the first real sound that Malcolm had heard from her. It was guttural, visceral as her pain. She moved fast, agile like a gymnast. Malcolm instinctively brought his knees up, lashing out with his bound feet as soon as she was close enough.

  
  


The woman grunted in pain, dropping the flashlight into the water. It danced around for a moment, casting a chaotic circle of light at the bottom of the tunnel before coming to a stop. The light flickered once, twice, before dying away. 

  
  


Malcolm made the mistake of looking at the flashlight one last time before it went out. As his eyes became painfully aware of the darkness, the profiler tried to kick her again. She was on him before he could even lash out. Her hand flew to his neck, small but strong enough to press down painfully on his trachea.

  
  


Malcolm gagged, twisting away from her touch. He was so focused on regaining the ability to breath that he never caught a glimpse of the knife she thrusted into his side.

  
  


Fire exploded inside as the blade cut through flesh and muscle. The profiler gasped, too stunned to voice his pain, agony stealing his breath and reason away.

  
  


The killer twisted the blade and pulled it free with a sickening squelch as blood and tissue reluctantly agreed to release metal.

  
  


Bright fell back against the wall, knees pulled up in a botched attempt to reach the source of his pain. He could feel something hot and thick soaking the side of his shirt, quickly spreading towards the waist of his pants. Distantly, he could hear a woman's muffled cries, despair filling her every sound. He hated hearing Eve sound like that...

  
  


Click. “ _ Shut up _ .” Click.

  
  


ººº§ººº

  
  


“ Did you know that Great Kills got its name from the many creeks in the area, rather than because of any abnormally large number of homicides?” Edrisa supplied out of nowhere. She tended to overshare random tidbits of information when she was nervous. And she was currently very nervous. Worried sick, she would even say, going from the queasy feeling in her stomach. “It comes from the Dutch word  _ Kill _ , which means creek or channel, rather than the English  _ Kill,  _ which means... well, kill! In fact, the whole of New York used to be called New Amsterdam, as a tribute to the capital of the Netherlands-”

  
  


“Edrisa...can we please focus on the body instead?”

  
  


The small woman cleared her throat. “Of course!” Her eyes kept darting towards the door, like she was expecting the fourth member of their team to join in, despite the fact that Gil had informed her of Malcolm's current ' _ missing _ ' status. “Right! Melissa Summers, age twenty-four, healthy other than the fact that she's, you know, dead,” she started. “Same MO as the other two victims: strangulation with post-mortem sewed-in fins. I estimate her death to be at about forty-eight hours ago, give or take.”

  
  


“Her husband filed a missing person's report a week ago...that means the killer holds on to her victims a lot longer than we'd assumed,” JT provided. “Like victim number two, they too were recently married and living in Staten Island.”

  
  


“So, she kills one victim and places her body in the water when she already has the next one?” Dani asked, doing the math. “I mean, aren't serial killers supposed to have some kind of cooling period between murders?”

  
  


The group actually paused, expecting the profiler's voice to fill the air, releasing a few pearls of wisdom on the subject matter of his expertise. Instead, they were met with a silence so heavy and thick that there was barely any room for them to breath.

  
  


“ So...” Edrisa broke the eerie quiet awkwardly, “the killer is also very meticulous, amazingly careful about leaving absolutely no evidence of herself on the victim. Even as well preserved as Melissa is, I couldn't find a single fingerprint, skin fragment, fiber, anything.  _ But, _ ”  she pointed out, a smile spreading across her lips as the medical examiner figuratively pulled a rabbit out of her hat. “I did find a couple of odd things,” Edrisa went on.

  
  


“Odd as in...they don't belong on her?”

  
  


“ Odd as in downright bizarre,” Edrisa explained. She moved to the head of the table, gently prying the victim's mouth open. “I had assumed that the lack of tongue on the other two victims had been caused by marine life, when in fact...see that?” she asked, aiming a small flashlight inside. No one was actually bold enough to have a look, so she clicked the light off with a uff, realizing yet again that her most enthusiastic audience member was absence. Malcolm would have found the cut fascinating. “The tongue was severed about a third of the way. From the type of cut, I would say that she's experienced with knives, but not a medical professional.”

  
  


“Before or after?” Gil asked, sadly looking at the victim. He already had a pretty good idea what Edrisa would say. After Malcolm had mentioned that the killer had a thing for mermaids, he had looked up the mythology. The Disney version was about as cute as it got; everything else was just blood and death.

  
  


“Before,” the medical examiner confirmed gloomily. “There are some signs of cauterization and scar tissue, so I would say she cut off their tongues around three to four days before killing them.”

  
  


“Effectively silencing them,” Dani let out, sadness in her eyes. “Wasn't there something about sirens luring sailors to their death with songs?”

  
  


“Or the Little Mermaid,” Edrisa pitched in, earning a look from everyone. “The original Hans Christian Anderson version, not the Disney movie,” she pointed out, offended at the idea.

  
  


“Is there a difference?” JT asked sarcastically.

  
  


“Huge difference!” Edrisa gestured, choosing to completely miss the point of his tone. “Like, in the original story, the witch offers a potion for her to gain her human legs, but in return she demands the mermaid's tongue and singing voice. And still she doesn't get the prince!”

  
  


Gil frowned. Whatever the motivation behind the killer cutting off the victims' tongues, they first needed to actually catch her and then ask. “You said a couple of things?” he reminded the medical examiner. “What else did you find?”

  
  


“Yes,” she agreed, turning away from the fairytales and going back to the dead body on the table. “There was a greasy, yellow residue under the victim's nails that I believe to be some sort of fatty tissue,” she pointed out, showing them the vial with the sample. “And there was also this,” she said, moving to the door. She clicked the lights out, blanketing the room in darkness.

  
  


“Edrisa, we don't have time to play games,” Gil warned, a trace of annoyance in his voice. Malcolm didn't have time for this.

  
  


“Wait for it,” she whispered, excitement leaking into her tone. “Takes a bit for the eyes to adjust...”

  
  


Just as the Lieutenant was about to put an end to whatever the hell the medical examiner was trying to do, he saw it. “Is that...is the victim-”

  
  


“ _ Glowing _ ?” JT asked, dumbstruck.

  
  


Now that the detective had put a word to it, it was impossible not to see the faint yellow, ethereal glow that was coming off the victim's skin. It was barely there, almost an illusion at the edges of their vision, but it was there.

  
  


“Is that body paint?” Dani asked, closing the distance to get a better look.

  
  


“No.” Edrisa flipped the lights back on, the sudden harshness of the light making it difficult for their eyes to adjust. “It's radiation. I ran a scan and found trace levels of it all over the victim.”

  
  


Dani neatly jumped away from the body. JT's left eyebrow rose even as he took an involuntary step away too. “Say again?” he hissed, looking non too pleased at the medical examiner.

  
  


“What kind of radiation?” Gil asked very calmly. In his mind, he was already imagining having to close down the whole precinct, delaying even further their efforts to find Malcolm.

  
  


The medical examiner looked at them in confusion. “Oh, don't worry...it doesn't affect us anymore than you run of the mill, regular X-ray,” she assured, dismissing the whole idea with a wave of her hand. “Although, Marie Curie might disagree--”

  
  


“Radium, is that what you're talking about?” Gil asked, cutting short the woman's ramblings about dead physicists. “Why would the body be giving off radiation?”

  
  


“Because she was exposed to some for an extended period of time?” Edrisa ventured, giving the most obvious answer with a slight shrug of her shoulders. Their guess was as good as hers. “I would say that the exposure occurred fairly recently, or else the radioluminescence would have dissipated by now. I mean, the other two victims were clean, but that could either be because we found them a week too late to see it, or because they were never exposed in the first place...”

  
  


“So, wherever she was killed, there is an important source of radium nearby,” Dani surmised. Her eyes lit up as the words triggered her memory. “Wait...wasn't there some kind of scandal a few years back about closing a whole park in Staten Island because of radiation? As in, right beside Great Kills?”

  
  


“Great Kills Park,” JT confirmed. “Yeah, I remember that. The place was closed down because they found out that the whole area was radioactive. It used to be some sort of dumping ground in the fifties or something.”

  
  


“Okay...JT and Dani, look into that! So far it's out best lead in finding this woman and Bright,” Gil ordered, a sudden wisp of hope nearly stealing his breath away. “Edrisa, in the meantime-”

  
  


“Find what the heck the victim had under her nails,” she finished for him. “Gotcha!” the medical examiner added, giving the Lieutenant a single finger gun salute.

  
  


“Lieutenant?” Sergeant Roofus, an older officer who usually worked reception, was standing by the door, looking sweaty and flushed, like he had just sprinted all the way down to the morgue. “You better come upstairs.”

  
  


Gil's heart stopped for a full second. They were all operating under the assumption that Malcolm was alive, that there was still time to get him back. It was the only way they could continue to function and any other conjecture was simply put aside. But...

It wasn't usual for Roofus to come looking for him with such a sense or urgency. Usually when there was someone to talk with the Lieutenant or a package for him, the Sergeant would wait until Gil was back in his office or gave him a call. Whatever this was, it had spooked the older man. “What is it Roofus?”

  
  


The Sergeant wiped the sweat from his forehead, dislodging his glasses in the process. “Boss, a woman just came through the front door with a note saying that she is the Mermaid Killer,” he announced.

  
  


Gil scrunched his nose. The problem with this type of cases was that there were plenty of lunatics in the city fighting for their fifteen minutes of fame. Roofus, however, was an experienced officer. He wouldn't get alarmed over just anything. “A note...what made you believe her?” he asked, already knowing he wasn't going to like the answer.

  
  


Roofus paled under the bright fluorescent lights. “She nailed the damn thing to my desk with a bloody knife, dripping all over the place! And she...she was holding a drippy, red thing in her hand,” the older man whispered, going slightly green at the memory. “Boss...I think it's a piece of someone's tongue.”

ººº§ººº


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Many thanks to Hannah_BWTM for beta-ing this chapter! Any remaining mistakes are mine!

ººº§ººº

  
  


Gil peered through the two-way glass, studying at the woman on the other side, a steaming cup of coffee in his hand. Her eyes, pale blue, seemed to be looking straight at him, even though the Lieutenant knew that, from her side, the only thing she could see was her own reflection.

  
  


She was an imposing figure, older than the profile had initially suggested. If he had to guess, Gil would say she was closer to fifty rather than being someone in her twenties. There was a scar above her left eye, faded from age and a discoloration on the fourth finger of her left hand.

  
  


The Lieutenant twirled his own wedding ring on his finger, knowing he had a similar mark underneath it, the fading born from years of keeping that band of skin hidden from sunlight. She wasn't a newly wed like her victims, of that much he was sure.

  
  


Her mug shot put her at six feet tall, with broad shoulders and well defined muscle on her arms. The blood covered clothes she had been wearing when she had arrived had been bagged and sent to evidence. An orange jumpsuit had been provided, but she had refused to wear any shoes, waddling from the holding area to the interrogation room in her bare feet. Still, she had towered over the officer who had accompanied her by over a head.

  
  


Malcolm had been right about the hair color. Hers was pale blond, almost white, with streaks of red in it's midst. It wasn't a fashion choice; Gil knew that those locks owed their color to blood splatter rather than hair dye. She had used that knife on someone just before waltzing into his precinct.

_His_ precinct, not the 122  th  back in Great Kills, but rather the 16  th  How the hell had she know? Had she been watching them? Had she followed them all the way from Staten Island?

“Has she spoken a word yet?” he asked JT, who was standing by his side, doing his own bit of staring. The detective shook his head, arms wrapped protectively around his chest. He wasn't the only one around the precinct looking spooked over the presence of the mysteriously quiet woman. There was a sobber atmosphere hanging around the precinct, like they could sense the presence of a predator amongst them.

  
  


“Not a peep,” the tall man admitted. “Couldn't get a single print out of her either...all of her finger pads were nothing but scar tissue, like she burned them or scraped them off,” JT admitted, frustration seeping into his voice.

  
  


“Shit...people actually do that?”

  
  


“ _She_ did,” the detective pointed out with a shrug.

  
  


“So, we still don't know who the hell this woman is,” Gil resumed. A small part of him had hoped that she had given herself up because Malcolm had convinced her to do it. He had seen the kid pull off some unbelievable stunts with that sweet talk of his, like making a room full of armed robbers shoot themselves out. But all it took was one look at the woman for the Lieutenant to know that there was no reasoning with her, no words that could force her to do anything that she didn't want to.

  
  


There was an intensity to her gaze that made most people flinch away, sensing that there was something not quite stable with the mind behind the look. A predator's gaze, like a shark, devoid of emotion or pity, free from the rules of an active conscience, observing the world around her like it was a thing to be vanquished. A mere curiosity whose only purpose was to entertain her.

  
  


“There was nothing on her besides the note, the knife and... the _tongue_ ,” JT added in disgust. Edrisa had come upstairs with them to collect the piece of evidence and she had confirmed Roofus' suspicions. Based on the structure and anatomy she was pretty certain that it was indeed a human tongue. All they needed to know was who had it previously belonged to.

  
  


Something told them that it wasn't Melissa's, the latest victim. _Too fresh_ , Edrisa had deemed it. None of them dared to voice the possibility that the medical examiner could have been holding in her hand the same silver tongue that had pulled Malcolm out of countless trouble before.

  
  


The note had been handwritten on common printing paper and the hunting knife wasn’t particularly extraordinary, other than the layer of blood covering it.

  
  


Which meant that, if they wanted answers, the silent woman on the other side of the mirror had to be the one to provide them.

  
  


“You sure you're up to do this, boss?” JT asked, looking at the coffee mug in the Lieutenant's hand. The white knuckles around the handle were a stark contrast with the back coat of paint on the NYPD mug.

  
  


Gil eased his crushing grip, setting the now cold coffee on the table. He scratched his goatee, pondering JT's question. It was a valid one. He was too close to the case, too emotional, dangerously on the verge of being more invested in getting Malcolm back than solving the case.

  
  


In finding out if the kid was still alive.

  
  


If this was any of the officers working with him, Gil would have asked that person to stand down and allow someone else to lead the questioning. But there was something in the woman's pale eyes that told him that it had to be him...”No, I'm good,” he assured the other man. “I'm going in alone.”

  
  


ººº§ººº

  
  


Malcolm crawled his way back to consciousness like a man climbing to the top of Everest Mountain. Each step towards the light was an Herculean effort, taxing his whole being within one inch of complete exhaustion.

  
  


He opened one eye, the other pressed against the wall where he had slumbered against. He could see the empty tunnel, funneling down until it disappeared in to absolute darkness. Still, it didn't felt as dark as before.

  
  


The clandestine feel of the surrounding gloominess did not help to aid his jumbled thoughts after he had been stabbed. The profiler vaguely remembered hearing someone speaking. A woman's voice that wasn't coming from a recording device, pleading and scared. The gagged woman.

  
  


Someone had screamed after that, a sound filled with pain and angst. A sound that would have normally spurred him into action, had he not been floating on the edge of consciousness at the time. Fear spiked inside Malcolm's chest, wondering if his unconscious mind had picked up the dying echoes of the killer's most recent victim. The woman had been right there, and he had been helpless to do anything about it.

  
  


He listened closely, desperate to hear any sign that the woman he had seen before was still alive.

  
  


The tunnel was quiet now. All that Malcolm could hear, besides his own breathing, was the distant sound of water drops, plunging into distant puddles.

  
  


Malcolm had once gone on a spelunking field trip with his boarding school. He remembered the cold, cathedral-like feeling of the tall caves, their ceilings covered with dangling stalactites, like beautiful sculptures made by the great masters of art. Inner streams pooling into crystal clear ponds, as water as white as snow dripped from the walls.

  
  


This was nothing like that. It was like more the sound of a broken faucet keeping you awake at night. Plop...plop...plop...

  
  


Bright blinked, his eyes stinging with the remains of the dirty water that seemed to coat every single surface in that tunnel, as well as his own sweat. There was a faint, anemic light coming from a lantern hanging from a hook in the ceiling. As his sight embraced the gloom, the profiler managed to finally glimpse some of his surroundings.

  
  


He looked down at his side, wondering if that particular stretch of his skin came with a sign saying 'Stab Here!', a sign that only serial killers could read because the woman had managed to get him in almost the exact same place as John had stabbed him before.

The blood covering his clothes had turned the same color as tar, stiffen like starch. There was enough in there to make the profiler question how much more he could afford to lose.

  
  


His shirt had been ripped open, fragments hanging loose against his torso. Underneath, he could feel something thick and soft wrapped around his waist. Malcolm twitched, annoyed that he couldn't use his hands to actually feel it, but still, he was pretty sure that the killer had tried to dress his wound. But why?

  
  


The notion that this was more than a grieving woman sneaked up on Malcolm like a slithering snake and once it had him trapped in its fangs, it would not let go. Was it possible that there was a mission behind her killings, a calling that only she could hear?

  
  


She hadn't killed him at the beach, even though that would have solved all of her problems. Instead, she had decided to drag him all the way to... _wherever_ that place was. But by doing so, she had been forced to choose between taking care of an unwanted witness or getting the body of her latest victim to the ocean. There wouldn't have been time to do both, not after Malcolm had sounded the alarm over his comm.

  
  


So, the killer had abandoned her most recent kill on the sand for the police to find. A mermaid that would never be returned to her habitat. A failed mission as far as the killer was concerned.

  
  


She hadn't killed him afterwards either. Now that he looked back, Malcolm could see that her stabbing him had been a purely emotional response to something he had said. She hadn't been planning to attack him until he provoked her into doing it. He didn't fit her ideology, there was no point in killing him. So, why was he still there?

  
  


The water stirred at a distance, a quick splash, like someone slipping in a pond.

  
  


Malcolm shifted his legs, his submerged feet so numb that he was no longer certain they were still attached. “Hello?” he called out. He closed his eyes, fervently hoping that the sound hadn't been just a figment of his imagination.

  
  


A whimper answered him.

  
  


“Don't be scared,” he begged, knowing that the sound could only belong to the woman he had seen before, the one gagged and tied up. She was still alive! “I'm with the police...I’m here to help...you're going to be fine.”

  
  


He wasn't exactly sure how he was going to help, but Malcolm trusted Gil and his team to find them. If he was right, they now had access to a victim's body undamaged by water, one that would hopefully provide them with all the answers they needed to catch this killer. All the two of them needed to do was stay alive until the others figured it out. “My name is Malcolm. Malcolm Bright...please, I need you to make some noise so I can find you.”

  
  


“Mmmaaammm...”

  
  


She sounded so close...

Bright pushed his hands against the wall, trying to stand up. The world shifted around its axis just for his benefit, up and down dancing around in the dark until the profiler was left feeling dizzy and nauseous. He leaned back, savoring the solid presence of the wall and praying not to fall down. He was pretty sure he wouldn't be able to stand up again if that happened.

  
  


“Mmmaaammm...”

  
  


He tried again. If he could reach the woman, between the two of them they might actually managed to get free, maybe even try to escape on their own. Even if they eventually ended up hopelessly lost in those tunnels, at least they wouldn't be at the killer's mercy. “That's it,” he encouraged her through clenched teeth. “You're doing great...” He needed his body to stop betraying him and start doing what was required of it.

  
  


“Mmmaaammm...”

  
  


Once standing, Malcolm was faced with the insurmountable reality that the only way to move forward with bound feet was to jump. Mentally, he prepared himself for the jolt that it would give the stab wound on his side. It would hurt, but he could take it. After all, it was just pain. And he had a high threshold for that.

  
  


He jumped.

  
  


With his feet under water it wasn't even much of a jump, more like a barely controlled shuffle forward. To his injured side, however, it felt like someone had taken an iron club and smashed it against his insides. Malcolm bit off a scream as he fell to his knees. He could taste blood on his lips.

  
  


Cold water soaked his pants, splashing around him, raining up on his face. Malcolm breathed through his nose, trying to control the pain. Already he could feel the edges of reality escaping his grasp and, even though he wanted nothing more than the sweet escape from pain that unconsciousness could provide, he could not afford to waste that kind of time. He needed to reach the gagged woman.

  
  


The profiler wiped his face on his shoulder, disgusted by the wet feeling left behind as some of the pungent water sprinkled his lips. He could taste salt in his mouth, a flavor that he wasn't sure was there before.

  
  


“Mmmaaammm...”

  
  


The pleading sound started again, reminding Malcolm why he was putting himself through such torment. There was a woman in there that deserved to be reunited with her loved ones, who deserved a life, a chance to grow old and have a family.

  
  


He struggled to his feet again, barely able to stand straight as the severed muscles on his side complained. “Almost there...just a bit closer,” he whispered, not entirely sure to whom those words were meant for.

  
  


Clenching his teeth, Bright jumped again.

  
  


This time, as his knees once more hit the water, Malcolm was no longer able to keep his hold on both reality and gravity. So, he chose reality.

  
  


He fell forward, unconsciously rolling to the right as his body struggled to protect his wounded left side. His shoulder hit the water with a jolt, face dipping inside the water before he could stop it. Water pushed against his nose, demanding entrance. The pain was so intense that, for a second, Malcolm forgot how breathing worked. He breath the water in, rather than out.

  
  


Dark liquid like molten lava rushed up his nose and to his lungs, burning all the way down. Malcolm coughed and gagged, managing to swallow even more water as he wrestled with his own breathing. It felt like he was drowning in the world's smallest puddle.

  
  


He sputtered, bile taking advantage of the confusion to escape his mouth alongside with whatever he had managed to inhale. Malcolm's body convulsed as he struggled to regain some measure of control over his cramping muscles and lungs.

  
  


“Mmmaaammm...”

  
  


The sound maneuvered itself into his consciousness, calling the profiler back to his mission. She sounded so close now, he was sure they could almost touch if their hands hadn't been tied behind their backs. “C-can you * _cough_ * come closer? Please...”

  
  


For a moment, Malcolm wasn't sure she had heard his croaky plea or if she could even move at all. Then he heard it. The shy shuffling of feet against water.

  
  


Using the wall for support, Bright battled gravity every inch of the way as he pushed himself up to sit against the wall. His clothes were soaking wet and he was pretty sure that his wound had started bleeding again, but none of that mattered because he had reached his destination. The gagged woman.

  
  


He looked towards the sound, hoping that the proximity would allow him to catch a glimpse of her face. In the gloomy light, all he could see was her light hair.

  
  


“Mmmaaammm...”

  
  


She came closer, a tall and slender woman dressed in a white summer dress. Malcolm shuddered as he found Eve looked at him with pleading eyes.

Taken aback by the fact that his dead girlfriend was right there, looking back at him, it took Malcolm a moment to realize that there was no gag around her mouth.

  
  


“You’re not real,” he whispered. He closed his eyes, silently counting to five before looking out again. Eve just stared at him, her blue eyes sad and confused. “You’re not here!”

  
  


He tried to summon back the image of the woman he had seen before, a green gag covering most of her face. Suddenly taken by a terrifying realization, Malcolm looked down at the bandage on his side. It was green, the same green as the rag he had seen around the woman’s lips before. And it had been wrapped around his waist as a bandaid since he had regained consciousness. So, what was stopping Ev- the woman from talking?

  
  


Malcolm looked up, forcing his eyes to see past the ghostly facade of his dead girlfriend.

“Mmmaaammm...” Eve voiced again.

This time, as she opened her mouth to let out that terrifying moaning sound, Malcolm could see it...the mangled remains of muscle where her tongue was supposed to be. What was left of it.

  
  


Malcolm screamed.

  
  


ººº§ººº

  
  


The woman looked up as Gil pushed the door open. Ice cold eyes followed him around the room, tracking his movements with interest.

  
  


It was a reaction that the Lieutenant was familiar with. Every other perp who had sat in that chair, waiting to be questioned, had done the same thing when someone came in carrying a folder in their hands.

  
  


Lacking, however, was the fidgety nervousness that tended to accompany such a look. Whether guilty or innocent, the people who usually sat in that room were always a mess of anxiety and fear. This woman looked relaxed and at ease, almost happy to see him. It was a look that left Gil feeling on edge, the hair at the back of his neck standing to attention.

  
  


He felt like he was sailing uncharted seas. While it wasn't the first time that someone walked inside a police station claiming to be guilty of this or that crime, it certainly was the first time that a serial killer had done it in _his_ police station. Amongst other things, it completely subverted the whole purpose of questioning a suspect.

  
  


Instead of looking for a confession of what she had done, Gil needed her to prove that she really was who she claimed to be. The Mermaid Killer.

  
  


And figure out what she had done to Bright.

  
  


The Lieutenant took his time opening the folder and pulling out the plastic covered note. He set it on the table, the blood stains turning brown under the stark white light. Beside it, he set a blank piece of paper and a pen. “We need a sample of your hand writing to compare with this note,” he informed her. “A name would be nice too.”

  
  


The woman looked from the items on the table to Gil without barely moving her head. Wordlessly, she moved her arms, chains rattling against the metal table. She picked up the blank paper and pen, slowly writing something down. When she was done, she casually slid the paper across the table, like she was dealing cards in a poker game.

Gil hated poker. He looked down, refusing to pick the paper up. “ _I want her back_ ,” he read out loud, one eyebrow arching at the odd choice of words. “Who do you want back? The woman you killed?”

  
  


The woman stared at him, like she was the one waiting for an answer.

  
  


“You can't have her back,” he stated the obvious, his voice calm and free of judgment. Like hell if he was just going to sit there and wait on this woman’s demands. “Not unless you start talking...let's start with your name,” he demanded instead.

  
  


The woman grabbed the paper, adding another line.

  
  


“ _Give her back or she will die_ ,” Gil read again, frowning. Did she truly believe that the women she killed were actually mermaids and that keeping them out of the water would kill them? If that was the case, that sort of detachment from reality would make it near to impossible to get a straight answer out of the woman.

  
  


He might have to call in a psychiatrist to help them...Of course, it would figure that the one person that they needed to find out where Malcolm was would be the man himself. “She's already dead,” he pointed out, trying to measure her reaction when confronted with the naked reality. “She belongs with her family now. With her husband. Not in the ocean.”

  
  


That certainly got a reaction out of the otherwise emotionless woman. She pushed to her feet, enraged when the movement was cut short by the chains around her wrists.

  
  


It was, however, the guttural sound that escaped her lips that surprised Gil. He leaned back against his chair, casually observing the woman, even as his mind scrambled for explanations. Two things had made themselves clear: she had come to them with a clear purpose on her mind and, now that the Lieutenant had finally heard her voice, he wasn't entirely sure she could speak at all.

  
  


He needed to get a doctor in there, someone who could give him some damn answers about this woman because it was becoming very clear that she wouldn't be giving them anything willingly.

  
  


Just as he pushed his chair away to leave, the woman sat back down, snatching the piece of paper back in anger. The pen jerked against the paper, pressed so hard that it actually tore through at some points. Her handwriting changed drastically from the neat, cursive forms of before, becoming as guttural as her scream.

  
  


She pushed it in Gil's direction, looking up defiantly.

  
  


“ _Give her back or_ _he_ _will die_ ,” the Lieutenant read, his voice breaking as he realized who she was talking about. He slipped his hand into his pockets casually, trying to hid the fact that they were shaking terribly. His eyes found hers, barely contained anger meeting open gloating. “How do I even know he's still alive?”

  
  


The woman shrugged, casually leaning back against her chair. She was back in control.

She lifted on finger, pointing at her wrist, in the same spot where most people would wear a watch. The message was loud and clear.

Malcolm was running out of time.

ººº§ººº

  
  


“We can't just give her the victim's body back,” JT pointed out, taking a good look at the people gathered around the conference room. Gil, Dani and Edrisa all looked back at him in silence. When no one openly contested his words, he sagged in relief. “Just checking, you know?”

  
  


“We can't just do nothing either,” Dani pointed out. Her eyes were trapped by the new photos glued to the white board. It felt wrong to have a picture of one of their own up there. “Assuming that she hasn't killed him already and isn't just doing this for kicks...”

  
  


“NO! He's still alive!” Edrisa let out, perhaps a bit too enthusiastically. She covered her nervousness by pushing her glasses up her nose and burying her eyes in her report. “I mean...the blood on the knife matches Bright's samples on file, but that doesn't mean...”

  
  


“That she stabbed him with it?” Dani finished for her. It seemed cold and detached on her part to point out the naked truth in such a harsh manner, but there really was nothing to be gained from burying their heads in the sand. “What about the tongue?”

  
  


The medical examiner swallowed hard, her mouth suddenly dry at the idea that the knife she had studied so closely had been inside her favorite profiler, causing perhaps irreparable damage. The thought of him being dead...

  
  


“Edrisa?”

  
  


Her eyes were shiny behind her lenses as she looked up, a fake smile plastered across her lips. “Yes! Tongue! Unknown _female_ origin,” she reported, putting as much emphasis on the female part as she could. At least those were some good news. “It doesn't belong to Melissa or the perp.”

  
  


“Wait...why would you be comparing a cut off tongue to the woman we have in questioning?” JT asked with a frown.

  
  


The petite medic looked confused for a moment, like he was asking why would water be wet. “Because the perp has a severed tongue, just like the victims,” she pointed out, squinting at him. “Hadn't I mentioned that already?”

  
  


Gil's eyebrow was busy doing rock climbing across his forehead. “No...pretty sure that's news to all of us,” he reminded her.

  
  


“Oh, sorry...so much happening at the same time, must have slipped my mind,” Edrisa retracted. “So, when you said that you needed someone to take a look at the perp's ability to speak, I sat down and went through the images of your conversation with her. FYI, really creepy lady,” she added with a shudder. “Long story short, there is this one frame, when she opens her mouth to scream, where you can see the tip of her severed tongue. I'm assuming her vocal cords are still intact because she can make sounds, but the lack of a full tongue leaves her effectively unable to articulate most words in just about any spoken language-”

  
  


“So, she can't talk?” JT abbreviated. “You think she cut it off herself?” the detective aimed his question at the other police officers in the room.

  
  


“Or someone did this to her,” Dani pointed out.

  
  


Gil shook his head. “According to Bright, she developed this obsession over mermaids _after_ losing her lover. Cutting off her own tongue was probably a part of the whole process that ended with her killing women who look like her and turning them into mermaids.”

  
  


“She wants to return Melissa to the sea, to ' _save_ ' her,” Dani reminded them. “But if she sees herself as a mermaid too, wouldn't that mean that she would have to stick close to water as well?”

  
  


The lieutenant bit on his lower lip staring at the white board. There was a topographic map in there showing the whole Staten Island area, red circles marking the places where the victim had been found and Malcolm had been taken. Someone had added a yellow circle around the Great Kills Park. “That's the radiation zone?” he asked, getting a nod from JT. “And it matches the radiation found in our victim?”

  
  


This time it was the medical examiner who nodded. “And before you ask, yes, the perp matches the same radiation as well, although she presented with much higher levels than the victim.”

  
  


“Because she spends more time in there than any of the victims,” Gil inferred. “It's close enough to the water that she would feel 'at home'...So, we're thinking that she's keeping her victims somewhere in the contaminated Park area?” What was left unsaid was clear in everyone's mind. It would also be the place where she had Malcolm. “It's a pretty damn big area, people!”

  
  


JT joined him at the white board. “The radiation hot spots were located here,” he said, pressing a red pin on an area inland, near Great Kills. “Here and here,” he added, pressing two more, closer to Oakwood and the stretch of beach front. “The whole area has been closed down for years now. There's nothing there.”

  
  


Gil squinted into the map. While the surrounding area around the Park was littered with several little towns, there was only one thing dead center in the Park itself. “There is something there,” he said, his finger pressed against the map. “The Oakwood Beach Wastewater Treatment Plant.”

  
  


“A sewage facility?”

  
  


Edrisa nearly jumped in the air at the mention of sewers. “Yes! That fits!” she exclaimed, nearly toppling her glasses with her excitement. “You know the greasy residue I found under Melissa's nails? It was actually a mix of human and animal fat and I was trying to come up with a place where the two of them might occur naturally at the same time, and I was coming up blank...but of course, a sewer makes perfect sense!”

  
  


“Maybe she works there?” JT ventured, his spirited ignited by finally having a solid clue. “I'm gonna hand out her picture at the place, see if anyone knows who she is.”

  
  


Instead of being happy with the fact that they had come one step closer to finding Malcolm, Gil looked even more worried now. “There's miles and miles of sewage tunnels under the city,” he pointed out. “If she's keeping Malcolm in one, how the hell are we going to find him in time?”

  
  


ººº§ººº


	4. Chapter 4

ººº§ººº

  
  


“ Her name is Victoria Mellows,” JT announced, slapping a photo of the perp on the table alongside a whole file on the woman. “Forty-nine years old, married to Jared Mellows until he passed away last Christmas.”

  
  


Gil picked up the file. Jared had been fifty when he died, but the man in the picture looked over seventy. “What did he die of?” Gil asked despite knowing the answer already. There was only one illness that sucked the life of a person like that.

  
  


“ Liver cancer, advanced stage,” JT supplied. “He died at home. Victoria was the only one with him at the time.”

  
  


“ You think she sped things along?” Dani asked. Her eyes were on Gil, knowing that this was not an easy subject for the Lieutenant. She hadn't been around yet when Jackie died, but JT had told her all about Gil's late wife and how hard they had both fought to beat the disease that had eventually claimed her life. “Maybe he asked her to do it?”

  
  


Gil nodded, his eyes far away as he stared at the photo of a man he had never met. Jared's gaze was one he was familiar with. He had seen the same look on Jackie's face, toward the end. Acceptance. “It's quite possible,” he agreed. Either way, Victoria had been braver than him. “Do we have an address for her place?”

  
  


The detective shook his head. “She sold the house after her husband died and fell off the grid after that. No phone number, no bills, not even a stray bit of junk mail,” JT explained. “And it looks like you were right about the Oakwood Beach Wastewater Treatment Plant, boss. Jared used to work there as one of the engineers. Folks there said that, before he got sick, the couple used to hang around all the time, like two love birds.”

  
  


“ So, she knows the place well,” Gil surmised. “JT, Dani, organize a search team and go through that facility. She might have taken Malcolm there,” the Lieutenant ordered. He picked up the file, pulling Jared's picture to the top. “Meanwhile, I'm going to have a chat with our lady friend.”

  
  


ººº§ººº

  
  


Eve recoiled at Malcolm's scream. She whimpered, pushing her mangled mouth towards her shoulder, like she was trying to hide it.

  
  


Filled with shame, the profiler closed his eyes. It was next to impossible for him to know what was real and what was a figment of his imagination, but the hurt in those eyes was not something that he could ignore either way. “I'm sorry,” he whispered. “You startled me...did she do that to you?” he asked. 

The idiocy of his words became immediately apparent to him as the woman opened her mouth and the same whining moan as before came out, the only sound she could make. Besides, the answer was obvious. He had just stood there, fighting to stay conscious, as the killer cut that poor woman's tongue. “Sorry, sorry...that was stupid of me. Look, each of us on our own, we’ll never be able to get out of here, but together, we might have a chance!”

  
  


Eve stared at him, her lips closing in an almost smile. She gave him a nod before turning around to show him her bound hands. Malcolm looked at the knots with a growing sense of despair. They looked far worse than he had imagined. 

Besides the knotted rope, the killer had fitted a thick zip tie between her hands and the rest of the rope – a precaution he feared had been taken with him as well. Even if they were able to undo the knot, the only way to get rid of the zip tie was to cut it off.

  
  


Seeing Eve right there, bloodied and in pain, was stealing his breath away, making it hard to think straight. A part of Malcolm's mind knew that this was a hallucination, that Eve was dead and buried, that it was impossible for her to be here. But that was not what his eyes told him; that was not what his brain was currently convinced of. And what his eyes were seeing was breaking his heart.

  
  


The profiler knelt down behind the woman, his knees complaining from the impact. “Don’t move,” he warned her, before leaning forward. Using his teeth, Malcolm tried pulling at the edge of the rope. The course material ripped at the tender skin of his lips, but he paid it no attention. The pressure of pulling at the knot made his head throb, and yet the thing refused to budge. It was too tight.

  
  


He slumped back on his haunches, defeated. “Okay, plan B. We're going to sit back to back and try to work on the knots on our hands, okay? See if we can get them loose enough,” he added, not waiting for a reply before pushing to his feet and turning his back to her.

  
  


He waited. The water rippled as the woman shifted behind him. And then he felt her warmth against his back. The kind of warmth that a ghost would never be able to provide.

  
  


Malcolm felt nimble fingers reach out blindly for his. The touch felt oddly intimate, two strangers brushing fingertips, both desperately fumbling for the wet knots. “That's it...you're doing great!” he encouraged her, even though the ropes were so tight that neither of them was making much of a progress.

  
  


Even standing as they were, the profiler had the distinct notion that the water was now higher than before. When he had first woken up, the water had barely reached the bottom of his legs. Now, it was well over his knees.

  
  


The level was definitely rising.

  
  


As his finger worked, Bright took in the walls, trying to determine just how high the water would reach in those tunnels. The fact that he could see lime all the way to the top did not bode well for their immediate future. He kept those findings to himself, though. Whoever this poor woman was, she had already been through enough without having to worry about drowning in the next... four or so hours, if his estimation was correct.

  
  


It was hard to work on tight knots that they could not see. Their fingers, numbed by the cold water, had little sensation left. More often than not, he could feel his touch slipping from the rope and scratching at the woman's hands instead.

  
  


His eyes landed on the lantern. It was one of the old metal ones, with batteries housed in the back with a screw-on lid. If he could manage to get the lid off, the edge of the metal might prove sharp enough to cut through the ropes and the zip ties.

  
  


“ Stop,” he let out, pulling away from the woman's frantic movements. Like Malcolm, she was growing increasingly frustrated at their lack of progress. “Change of plans...let’s get that lantern instead.”

  
  


ººº§ººº

  
  


“ Would you like some water? Tea?” Gil offered as he entered the room. “I would offer you coffee, but it's so bad around here that it might be considered torture.”

  
  


The woman stared at him, clearly pissed off at being kept waiting for so long. She shook her head, pushing a piece of paper towards the Lieutenant to emphasize the words she had written some time ago. “ _ You're wasting time. He doesn't have much longer _ .”

  
  


Gil steeled his features, not wanting the woman to know how much those words scared him. He was playing a dangerous game here, and Malcolm might be the one paying the price.

  
  


“ Why? Why doesn't he have much longer? What have you done to him, Victoria?” the Lieutenant threw in, noticing as she barely reacted to the use of her name.

  
  


The woman merely squinted at him, one long finger extended as she pointed at the very first line she had written “ _ I want her back _ .”

  
  


The Lieutenant sighed, refraining from giving her an answer. Instead, he set the file on top of the table before pulling out a chair and sitting in front of her, leaning back against the seat. “Let's talk about Jared instead,” he voiced. Gil's eyes locked with hers, taking in the nervous twitch that suddenly overtook the corner of her left eye and the way her hands tightened into fists on the table. “Did you kill him?” he bluntly asked, setting the dead man's photo between them.

  
  


The woman's fists turned white at the same rate that her face turned red. She pushed back, looking anywhere but at the photo, avoiding the image of her dead husband like it was something that would burn her eyes out.

  
  


“ Did you cut his tongue out too, or is that something you reserve only for the women you've killed?”

  
  


She stared at the wall instead, pretending to ignore him. If it weren't for her hands, grasping the edge of the table with such strength that Gil could hear the metal cringing, he would have bought the act. “I need some answers here, Victoria...I understand that you can't talk, but playing the silent game isn't going to help you. I need to write down exactly where you took him.”

  
  


She hissed, like a feral cat, stomping her feet as she turned further away from him.

  
  


“ You know, Malcolm – that's the name of the man you're currently holding hostage – he said that the first mermaid was a goddess who killed her lover by accident,” Gil told her, trying to get her to interact once again. “It's not your fault that your husband died. Jared was sick. You helped him get better...I understand.” Lord knew how much he understood. Those late night conversations between him, Jackie and God where they had discussed the possibility of ending her suffering were still much too fresh in his memory. It was something he had never told anyone, that he would never ever tell anyone.

  
  


Victoria must've sensed something in his tone, because she turned back to the table. Her hand reached out, pushing the photo to the floor in the same movement as she grabbed for the paper and pen once again. “ _ Funny, he said the same thing. Before I stabbed him. _ ”

  
  


Gil's left hand, hidden from view under the table, closed into a fist, nails digging into his palm until he was sure blood had been drawn. The sentence had clearly been meant to make him uneasy, to throw him off balance. Despite the fact that Edrisa had already confirm the source of the blood on the knife, it hurt to read the confirmation that Malcolm was injured. Instead, Gil forced himself to smile even as his heart broke. “See...you keep telling me stuff like that and then expect me to believe you when you say that he's still alive,” he pointed out. “Can't have it both ways, Victoria,” the Lieutenant admonished, like he was talking to a child rather than a woman close to his own age.

  
  


“ _ He was alive when I left him. Soon, that will stop being true. Give her back and he lives! _ ”

  
  


“Tell you what,” Gil said instead, ready to offer a deal. “I won't give her back to you, _but_ ,” he said, raising one finger in the air as the woman started to breathe hard, boiling in silent anger. “...I promise you that we will take her to the sea ourselves, _if_ you tell us where to find Malcolm.”

  
  


“ _ Liar. _ ”

  
  


“ You have as much reason to believe me as I have to believe you,” the Lieutenant countered. “Trust me, and I'll do the same.”

  
  


“ _ You're killing them both with your stubbornness. _ ”

  
  


Gil barely had time to read that last line before the woman ripped the paper back, crumbling it into a tight ball that she kept hidden inside her hand. He looked at her, sensing that there was something about that sentence that she hadn't meant to say. But the line wasn't new. She had mentioned it before...

  
  


Unless she hadn't been talking about Melissa at all.

“You're right,” he said, turning on the charm and smiling at the woman. Anyone who knew well enough could see easily past the deceit. Fortunately for the Lieutenant, she didn't know him. “100% right, I am being stubborn...what do you say we find ourselves some common ground and work out a way to get everyone where they belong?”

  
  


ººº§ººº

  
  


“ Shit!” Malcolm cursed. Again.

  
  


His handle on the English language had been reduced to curses and blasphemies in the past hour, as he grew more and more frustrated with how little they’d managed to accomplish. It had taken him an hour, or what felt like an hour, just to get the lantern down. Tracking time was difficult with his watch behind his back.

  
  


To his shame, that achievement had involved the woman kneeling down in the dirty water while he sat on her back before she slowly tried to get high enough so that he could knock down the damn thing with his head. Although the distance wasn’t all that insurmountable, the balance certainly was.

  
  


His mother had raised him to be a gentleman, there was no denying that. Jessica Whitly would die of embarrassment if she saw her son in that exact moment, but common sense had to come before chivalry, and there was no way he would have been able to pull off those sort of gymnastics with a wound in his side. Slender as she was, he would have folded like wet spaghetti under her weight, pass out from the effort and accomplish nothing but a vague sense of preserved manhood. 

  
  


More time had been lost as they tried to fish the lantern out of the water, like a weird, inverted game of bobbing for apples, where they had to use their bound hands rather than their teeth. Unlike the apples, however, the lantern had sunk to the bottom of the water, making it extra difficult to snatch.

  
  


By the time Malcolm was able to wrap his fingers around the damn thing, he had already been forced to sink down below the water line several times. It was definitely salt water that was filling the tunnel, as he felt it sting like acid as it coated his eyes and soaked through the bandage to poke at his wound. “Shit!”

  
  


It was somewhat of a hit and miss with the edge of the lantern cap. As soon as Malcolm had unscrewed the thing, they had been plunged into complete darkness yet again. He could feel the woman shivering next to him, small whimpers escaping her mouth every time he moved or touched her.

  
  


Selfishly, the profiler was grateful for the lack of light. Without it, he could not see, and if he couldn't see, he wasn't forced to deal with the sight of Eve every time he looked at the woman. “I don't even know your name,” he let out, filling the silence with something more than despair, his curses and the faint wosh-wosh sound of metal eating away the ropes around her hands.

  
  


She pulled away from his touch.

  
  


Confused, Malcolm turned around, almost knocking the woman over when she leaned forward, hot breath against his face, the faint smell of blood and burned flesh rising from between her lips. For a moment, the profiler wondered if she was going to kiss him. Instead, he felt the tip of her cold nose tracing a line on his cheek.

  
  


“ J...O...”

  
  


She pulled away. Even in the dark, Malcolm felt her staring at him, waiting. “Jo? Your name is Jo?”

  
  


She laughed. It was nothing more than a nervous, wretched giggle, but it was an improvement from her whimpers and frightened moans.

  
  


It was such a small thing, being acknowledged by her own name, but it made all the difference. Suddenly, she no longer was the woman without a tongue, who had been taken by a serial killer and who could die in the next couple of hours. She was Jo, and Jo had a life to go back to, a reason to live.

  
  


“ Alright, Jo, let’s get you free from these ropes so we can get out of here,” Malcolm said, the woman's joy seeping into his own weary soul.

  
  


When the ropes and zip tie around her hands finally broke, the profiler nearly tipped over at the sudden absence of the obstacle he had been struggling against for so long. His fingers clawed around the lantern cap, desperate to keep his hold on the only tool they had. “Alright, now that your hands are free, you should be able to work on my ropes faster. We need to start moving before she comes back.”

  
  


Malcolm turned around, handing the cap over to Jo. He stood there for a moment, waiting for her to start cutting at the ropes around his wrists. His shoulders were starting to hurt from the strain.

  
  


Instead of feeling the metal cap sawing at his ropes, Malcolm heard the sound of the woman flopping down in the water. He turned around too fast, hissing in pain and nearly toppling over at the overtaxing motion. Once he regained some measure of composure, he found her sitting down, working on her bound feet instead. “Or you can cut yourself free first...” he mumbled, breathing through the pain.

  
  


He couldn't really blame her. He had been there for a few hours, but there was no telling how long she had been there. If he was eager to get some movement back on his limbs, he couldn't possibly imagine how she must be feeling.

  
  


Sitting on the floor was getting near to impossible to do, no matter how much he wanted to rest. The water was rising faster now, reaching Jo's chest as she worked frantically on her ropes.

  
  


“ Do you have any idea where to go? Were you conscious when she brought you here?” Malcolm asked, immediately realizing that, even if Jo had answers for him, she wouldn't be able to give them. “Stupid! Sorry...don’t mind me...”

  
  


Even if everything were to work out perfectly for them, Jo would never be the same woman as before. Words had forever been stolen from her. The profiler could not imagine a worse fate.

  
  


In a macabre sort of way, it was truly fascinating to realize the killer's thought process. How she kept her victims in that place, isolated and helpless. The horrifying mutilation of the tongue served a dual purpose, whether the killer realized it or not.

  
  


In her mind, it was one more step in turning those women into mermaids. The lore warned sailors about sirens luring them to their deaths with their songs. Homer, in his Odyssey, had tried to solve the matter by pouring wax into the men's ears and tying them to the ships' masts, even if it didn't work all that well. The killer had been more effective, silencing them forever instead. They couldn't scream for help, they couldn't voice their fears or plead for their lives.

  
  


It was chillingly effective.

  
  


“ How's it going? Almost done there?” Malcolm asked, cursing that he could barely see her form sitting in the water. The sound of water slapping around her arms as she sawed through the ropes was his only answer.

  
  


He leaned against the wall. Soon, he wouldn't have a choice between standing and sitting down. Malcolm could barely feel his legs, his whole body shivering with waves of pain and cold, like a hammer and chisel, chipping away his energy.

  
  


“ She is going to bolt.”

  
  


Malcolm closed his eyes. It didn’t make much difference, as closed lids did very little to keep Martin Whitly’s observations from reaching his ears. It did, however, stopped him from seeing his father, leaning casually against the tunnel's wall, cleaning his fingernails with an oversized knife.

Malcolm would have sold his soul to get his hands on a knife in that moment.

  
  


“ Just watch it, son... she's gonna get those ropes off, and then she’ll leave you here to die,” the voice called out again, growing more desperate as the profiler continued to ignore him. “Fine... be like that. Just don't come running to daddy when she leaves your soggy ass here and runs for her life!”

  
  


It was merely a manifestation of his own thoughts. Trust issues resurfacing, Malcolm reminded himself, breathing deeply through his nose. Instead of focusing on distracting hallucinations, the profiler was trying to decide which way he and Jo should go. There was a slight current to the water around them. He could feel it pass by him, not strong enough to pull, but definitely moving with purpose.

  
  


If he were to guess, Malcolm would say that they were somewhere close to the sea and that the tunnel was filling with the tide. While it was impossible to know how many turns the sea water had taken before reaching that particular tunnel, one thing was certain: sewer tunnels were always built in a pattern of dispersion, so that the water had only one way to flow. If they moved against the current, they would probably reach a wider chamber, maybe even come across some access stairs.

  
  


“ You know, I think we should-”

  
  


There was a flurry of splashing water as Jo rose to her feet and began moving away from him, her steps wide and eating at the distance easily. Her legs were free.

  
  


“ Jo?” Malcolm called out, disbelief and fear turning his voice faint. “Jo! At least give me the cap back!” he yelled back at her. The steps faltered before coming to a stop. “Jo, I'll die if you leave me here tied up like this,” he pleaded. Despite the fear, despite the pain, the profiler hoped that he could still appeal to the terrified woman's humanity and decency. “You're a victim, Jo...not a killer.”

  
  


The water moved again. Malcolm held his breath, not daring to say another word for fear that he might spook her. He knew how fear worked, how it clouded a person’s judgement and turned decisions that would otherwise be sickening options into plausible ones. On a certain level, he wouldn't even blame her if she just took off without sparing him a second glance.

Oddly enough, the thought of dying in that place, alone, in the dark, as salt water slowly stole all of the available air away, did not scared Malcolm. It certainly wasn't not how he would chose to die, but there were worse ways. No...what scared him was how his mother would deal with the loss. Already he could see his mother unravelling under the pressure of Ainsley impending trial. If he added a dead son to the equation, Malcolm feared for what his mother might do to escape the pain.

  
  


His strapped hands, now well below the water line, were so cold and numb that he barely felt it as the woman pressed the metal piece against his fingers. Her lips touched his cheek for a brief moment, a kiss that was either her way of saying goodbye, good luck or I'm sorry. Perhaps all three of them, because as quickly as she neared him, she was gone again, moving even faster.

  
  


Malcolm was too stunned to react this time around. His fingers convulsed around the metal cap, his only way out of that place before he drowned.

  
  


“ Told you she was gonna bolt,” Martin singsonged, barely containing his giddiness at being right.

  
  


“ Shut up,” Malcolm let out, frustrated. It would be so easy to just lay back and simply give in to the pain and despair. Facing a hopeless situation no one would blame him for contemplating the peacefulness of giving up. 

Giving up, however, was not something that sat right with the profiler's troubled mind.

  
  


He needed to get his legs free as quickly as possible, so that he could start moving. Once he had that, he could work on the knots binding his hands on the move. The problem was that his hands were currently behind his back, and there was no easy way to reach his ankles from that angle.

  
  


“ Good thing you do that Yoga bendy stuff! Right, son?”

  
  


Malcolm wanted to scream, but even that would be wasting energy he simply did not have. Besides, his fa- his _hallucination_ was right. The only way he would be able to work on those ropes would be on his knees, leaning back in a sort of modified bridge position. Just thinking about it made Malcolm ache all over.

  
  


Excruciating pain over dying right there and then...seemed like an easy enough choice.

  
  


Malcolm knelt down, shivering as the water reached close to his shoulders. His foggy mind hadn't taken in account the rising level in the tunnel making things all the more difficult. He leaned back, trying to reach his ankles with the metal cap in his fingers.

  
  


Any other day, the extreme stretch would have been a welcome exercise, something to unwind tense shoulder muscles and his back. In that place and with a wound slowly tearing itself apart as he leaned more and more, it was nothing short of excruciating.

  
  


Malcolm felt the back of his head touch the water. Still, he couldn't touch his ankles.

  
  


Grinding his teeth against the pain, the profiler bent a little further, his ears sinking under water. The world became a muffled place, every sound filtered through the gurgle of the running current.

  
  


Just as Malcolm was starting to despair, thinking that the only way he would be able to reach those ropes was to place his whole head under water, the tip of his fingers brushed against his pants. He would have sighed in relief, but he no longer had the breath for that.

  
  


He started sawing away at the ropes, racing against the tide.

  
  


ººº§ººº

  
  


“ I don't like this plan,” Dani pointed out, expressing what was on everyone's mind. “For one, we'll be taking her back to her own playground, where she has an advantage over us. And I really don't like the fact that we're trusting her to do the right thing.”

  
  


“ We don't have another choice,” Gil explained. It wasn't like he didn't agree with her, it was just that they were running out of options. “We all saw what she wrote. We need to face the possibility that there might be another victim out there, trapped in the same place as Bright.”

  
  


“ Probably the owner of our mystery tongue,” JT added with a frown.

  
  


“ The search on the facility was a bust,“ Dani reported, still aggravated that they had found no trace of the profiler in there. The trip to Great Kills, had been nothing but a waste of time. The memory of running another wild goose chase to a deserted cabin in the woods when Malcolm had been in John Watkins’ hands was still much too fresh in her mind. “They have to be in the sewers,” the detective said, sounding less certain than what her words indicated. 

  
  


“ I've been looking at the missing persons' files from Staten Island and, so far, we have two possibilities for our possible victim,” JT surmised, pulling out two photos of missing blond women. “Amanda Rieu, age twenty six, single, pretty uneventful life,” he said, pinning the photo to the board. “And Joanna Kingsman, twenty two. She's getting married in two weeks. Fiancé is sure that she didn't run away on her own.”

  
  


“ It's gotta be Joanna,” the Lieutenant asserted. The woman in the picture appeared so happy and full of life, looking at something behind the camera. If she was indeed the previous owner of the lone tongue now stored inside a fridge in their morgue, would that young woman ever again smile as carefree as she had in that picture? Was she even still breathing? “How long has the fiancé said she's been missing?”

  
  


“ Three days,” said JT. “They were supposed to meet at a floral shop to see some last minute arrangements, but she never showed up.”

  
  


“ And our most recent victim has only been dead for two days,” the older man clarified. The math was grim but not hard to figure out. “That means Melissa was still alive when our killer grabbed Joanna-”

  
  


“ You think the two of them crossed paths, boss?”

  
  


Gil, however, was thinking much more than that. “All of these women, recently married or about to...what would they all have in common?”

  
  


“ Irritable personalities?” JT ventured, remembering all too well how Tally had slowly turned into a volatile volcano as their wedding day had edged close. Next to it, her racing pregnancy hormones were  _ mellow _ .

  
  


“ Wedding dresses,” Dani offered, earning herself a look from her partner. “What? There was an old magazine at the dentist office...I was bored,” she added defensively.

  
  


“ You think our killer works at a bridal store?”

  
  


Gil shook his head. It was just a hunch, but somewhere along the line all of those women had to cross paths with a serial killer without realizing it. One that sewed fins to their legs. “I think she might make them.”

  
  


“ A seamstress,” Dani let out, tasting the word against her tongue. “That would actually fit. We should check the place where Joanna, Melissa and Susan got their dresses. If it’s a match, we might have our killer's hunting grounds.”

  
  


“ And in the meantime, we're actually doing  _ this _ ?” JT hissed at the object standing on the table. Rather than the elephant in the room, it was a black body bag filled with sand bags that was capturing their attention.

  
  


“ We have to,” Gil repeated. “As long as Victoria believes that's Melissa's body, she will lead us straight to Malcolm and Joanna. I got the distinct impression from her that they don't have much time left.”

  
  



	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much Jameena! You're a true life savior!

ººº§ººº

  
  


The van felt cramped with overheated bodies. JT was riding shotgun in the front, a closed steal partition separating the two sections. In the back, Victoria sat between two armed officers on one side while Gil and Dani occupied the other seat in front of them. At their feet, in the middle of the floor of the van, rested the black body bag.

  
  


The prisoner, her hands cuffed and linked by a long chain to a leather belt around her waist, had been handed a tablet stripped of all other features except for an application that voiced out loud every word she typed, so that she could tell them where to go.

  
  


“ _I want to see her!_ ” a neutral, robotic voice echoed inside the closed space. It made her sound like a defective AI from some weird science-fiction movie.

The Lieutenant exchanged a look with the armed officers, biting his lower lip. “You can see her when we have eyes on Malcolm,” he offered instead.

  
  


The woman squinted at him, clearly unamused by his answer. “ _I don't trust you. For all I know, the bag is filled with stones. Show me!_ ”

  
  


“I thought we were trusting each other here,” the older man pointed out.

  
  


Victoria gave him no reply, simply sitting back against the side of the van and waiting. It was clear by her posture that she would be supplying zero directions before laying eyes on her latest victim's corpse.

  
  


“Just show her the body, boss, “ Dani pitched in. “The living matter more than the dead.”

  
  


Gil sighed dramatically, bending down and forward to reach the zipper. “Tell me where we're heading first,” he pressured. His fingers closed around the clasp, pulling ever so slightly to reveal a glimpse of blond hair. “Tell me, or this is as far as the zipper goes.”

  
  


“ _Great Kills, the harbor._ ”

  
  


“You got that, JT?” Gil confirmed with a touch to his comm.

  
  


“ _Loud and clear, boss_ ,” JT assured him. “ _And just so you know, that voice app thing...not a good idea! It's making our perp's creepiness reach a whole new level_ ,” he added with a shudder so intense that it could be felt in his words.

  
  


The van moved through New York's heavy traffic like the city was deserted, faster than any normal vehicle could ever manage at rush hour without the benefit of a siren blasting through the air. Still, the Lieutenant feared that they might not be moving fast enough.

  
  


True to his word, Gil pushed the zipper down the rest of the way, revealing the grey, dead features of Melissa Summers. Edrisa had thrown a small fit when they had made her aware of the plan, but she had performed beautifully in preserving the body. Melissa looked like she was merely asleep. “There...happy?”

  
  


Victoria leaned forward, as far as the restraints around her waist would allow, and peered into the bag. Her expression softened as she saw the dead woman, like someone reuniting an old friend after a long time apart. She looked...relieved.

  
  


Gil zipped up the bag when the prisoner sat back down. The smile on her face was an unsettling one. “Once we get there, I will only deliver Melissa to you when we have Malcolm back,” the Lieutenant warned her. “If for any reason he is not there, you're going back to jail and Melissa will be laid to rest in the ground. Are we clear on that?”

  
  


Victoria nodded, clasping her hands over the tablet. She seemed to be content with the silence that followed, her eyes closed and her features relaxed. Were it not for the presence of the uniforms by her side and the bright orange color of her clothes, one would think that they were a group of tourists on their way to the beach.

  
  


“ _Do we have the sewage schematics for Great Kills?_ ” Gil texted Dani, not wanting to alert the prisoner about that particular fact. The less Victoria knew about how much information they had and what their plans were, the better.

  
  


The detective opened a file on her phone, before handing it to Gil. They knew that it hadn't been the city's intentions to turn their sewage coverage into a damn maze, but that was what ended up happening nevertheless. The older man squinted at the tiny pictures, not really sure if those schematics were going to help or hinder their task.

  
  


Dani looked at her watch. Five PM. Bright had been taken before dawn, which meant that he had been missing for close to ten hours now. High tide was closing in on them...and if those sewer tunnels were somehow connected to the ocean, that meant that they might not be able to get down there at all. Not with the tunnels flooded and the entries under sea level.

  
  


“We have the Fire Department's Water Rescue squad standing by,” Gil reminded her, reading her thoughts. “There's still time.”

  
  


“ _This man...i_ _s h_ _e a policeman like you_?” The robotic voice echoed inside the van, turning their attention towards the prisoner. It was the first time that she expressed any sort of curiosity for something other than her own business.

  
  


“No,” Gil replied, meeting her gaze. “He's a psychologist, consulting with us.”

  
  


Victoria hissed at the word 'psychologist’, like the sound had burned her ears.“ _Charlatans, all of them...should've stabbed him twice._ ”

  
  


Gil felt Dani tense by his side, ready to jump up and give the woman a piece of her mind. Unlike him, the young detective had yet to be acquainted with this killer's peculiar brand of provocation.

  
  


“You sound like you've met a few,” the Lieutenant pointed out, refusing to take her bait. He really hoped that the kid had managed to get under her skin before she abandoned him to die.

  
  


Once more, she returned to silence, refusing to share any more details of herself. Truth be told, there wasn't much they knew about the woman prior to her husband's death. Where had she grown up; what did she do in life; what were her hobbies? Why did she decided to start killing those women?

  
  


_'No one's born broken, someone breaks us_ ,’ Malcolm always said. Gil wondered who had broken Victoria Mellows. Maybe she had just been born with a loose screw and lost it when she’d killed her husband. Maybe she didn't kill him, maybe seeing his unstoppable march towards death had sent her over the edge of sanity. Maybe she had always been like this and the husband had never suspected that he was sharing a life with a serial killer. Truth was, they might never know.

  
  


“ _We’re closing in on the harbor_ ,” JT announced over the comm. “ _Where to from here?_ ”

  
  


Gil looked at the woman. “We’ve arrived,” he announced. “What now?”

  
  


Victoria licked her lips, sniffing the air as if searching for the salty tang of the ocean to confirm his words. “ _Now we walk._ ”

ººº§ººº

  
  


Malcolm's head broke the surface of the water with a gasp, spitting mouthfuls out as he tried to suck in as much oxygen as he could.

  
  


The ropes binding his ankles had proven to be more stubborn than he had predicted, giving him no choice but to keep on sawing away long after the water had passed comfortable levels, forcing his head under water. Bent backwards, his nose had instantly clogged, as salt water took advantage of the position and itched its way towards his brain. Malcolm's head ached from the continuous thundering noise of rushing water and the constant dipping down.

  
  


Finally, after what felt like hours, the profiler felt the rope thin out, ebbing away until there was nothing but a string that he could easily break.

  
  


His legs, bent under the cold water, had long ago grown numb, feeling like detached rubber limbs that were no longer a part of his body. Malcolm struggled to his feet, stumbling against the wall like a drunken sailor, his shoulder scrapping against the rough surface.

  
  


The water was inching towards his neck, rushing too close to his mouth for comfort, threatening to overwhelm him at any moment. There was a claustrophobic feeling to it, stealing his breath away even though he still had room to breathe. Bright gulped in a deep breath, selfishly hoarding all the air that he could get.

  
  


He needed to get moving, or there wouldn't be any more air to hoard for much longer. The profiler had spent so much time with his feet bound together that it almost felt strange to finally be able to use both. Bright took one tentative step, the soles of his shoes immediately sliding off the slime covering the bottom of the tunnel.

  
  


Precarious balance lost, Malcolm sunk down one more time, helplessly twirling and coiling under water, trying to right himself. His hands, convulsively struggling to do some semblance of swimming, lost the grip on the metal cap.

  
  


Malcolm barely noticed the loss. He was too busy panicking.

  
  


It was like someone had turned off all of his senses at the same time. He couldn't see a thing, all he could hear was rushing water surrounding him from every corner and his legs weren't cooperating in keeping his head above water. His lungs burned with lack of oxygen, adding fuel to his growing anxiety.

  
  


Just as the profiler was about to lose his grip on consciousness, his brain kicked into gear as he pressed his shoes against the first solid surface he found, praying that his head would rush to meet the surface rather than the opposite wall. Breaking out of the water, Malcolm drank in whatever air he could, clearing the white spots that were beginning to dot his vision.

  
  


He took a precious moment to get his bearings back. The current had carried him further down the tunnel. While before he had some gloomy light to navigate, he now found himself in complete darkness.

  
  


Malcolm took a breath, stifling the sob that was struggling to break free, because if only one managed to get out, he was pretty sure a whole army would follow. He had no idea where to go or how to get his hands free. Moving against the current felt like he was on a treadmill, walking forward without leaving the same spot. It was too taxing and would get him nowhere before he ran out of strength.

  
  


Bright pushed down on the heel of one shoe, slipping it off before repeating the action on the other. With his bare feet planted on the slimy bottom, he felt better control on his balance, restoring some of his confidence.

  
  


He wasn't strong enough to go upstream, and he couldn't stay there. Which left Malcolm only one choice. He started following the stream.

  
  


ººº§ººº

  
  


Gil slipped for the fourth time in as many minutes, looking at the woman walking in front of him with a small degree of envy. Without any shoes on, Victoria was easily navigating the slimy ground inside the tunnels, walking steadily and confident like she was taking a stroll on soft grass rather than sewage.

  
  


“How much farther?” he asked.

  
  


“ _Almost there._ ”

  
  


Gil exchanged a look with Powell. She was holding the phone in her hand, the blue light turning her face sickly pale. If it weren't for the schematics in that phone and the young woman taking note of their path, the Lieutenant would already be feeling utterly lost. He had been able to track the first couple of turns, but after a while, all the walls looked the same. He could swear that they were doing nothing but walk in circles.

  
  


There was some water in the tunnels, but so far it hadn't reached past their ankles. It didn't mean much, but it was a small glimpse of hope nevertheless. One he would take over gut-wrenching despair.

  
  


Arroyo and Powell had been the only ones crawling through the access tunnel that Victoria had led them to. JT and the other officers had dispersed around the area, entering the tunnels through different access points. They each had a tracker with them, one that Dani could follow in her phone. So far, they were still so distance from one another that the only dots she could see were herself and Gil.

  
  


Gil was keeping a close watch on the woman walking in front of him. He agreed with Dani; this was the killer's territory and she had the advantage of knowing the place better than them. He couldn't help but feeling like fresh meat being dangled in front of an angry shark.

  
  


Behind him, Dani cursed as her boots slipped on the dirty water. Gil looked back for a split second, making sure that the detective was okay.

  
  


It was all Victoria needed to make her move. She turned around, swinging the tablet in her hands like a bat aimed at Gil's head.

  
  


The Lieutenant barely had time to raise an arm to cover his face. Plastic broke against bone, and the screen flickered before cracking and dying. Not waiting around for the results of her attack, Victoria darted forward, a flurry of clinking chains and splashing water.

  
  


“Shit! Boss, you okay?” Dani asked, pent-up energy bubbling to the surface as she ached to give chase.

  
  


“'m fine! Go after her!” Gil let out, holding on to his right arm even as he started running after the escaped prisoner as well.

  
  


But there was no point. They couldn't run fast enough with their shoes slipping every other step and two turns later, Victoria had completely vanished from their sight. They couldn't even hear her footsteps anymore.

  
  


Instead of looking pissed or disappointed with such a turn of events, the Lieutenant smiled, exchanging a knowing look with Dani. She too looked oddly at peace with the escape. “I think we've chased her enough,” he decided. Still favoring his right arm, he reached up with his left to touch his comm. “JT… she gave us the slip,” Gil radioed in. “What’s your status?”

  
  


“ _Wet and miserable_ ,” the detective supplied from the other end. “ _Entry points three and five were submerged. We’re headed out for number four right now._ ”

  
  


“Roger that,” the Lieutenant said, ending the connection. “Okay, Dani…I think we’ve given her enough of a head start. You can turn it on now.”

  
  


The young woman nodded, grabbing the tracker in her pocket. As she turned it on, one more dot joined hers and Gil's. A red dot labeled ‘prisoner 57843’. “She’s moving really fast.”

  
  


It had been nothing but added precaution, slipping the small tracker into the woman’s chains' belt. One that, if they were lucky, would lead them straight to where the killer was holding her prisoners.

  
  


“Edrisa,” Gil touched his comm again, this time summoning the small pathologist. “All set on your side?”

  
  


“ _Have I mentioned how much I dislike this? Because, really, this goes against everything I stand for and-_ “

  
  


“And if it weren’t for Bright, you would never agree to do something like this,” the Lieutenant finished for her. “I think you’ve mentioned it before…all set?”

  
  


“ _Yeah, we’re good_ ,” she finally answered, albeit under protest. “ _We’re on our way back already_.”

  
  


“Good job!” Gil ended, turning his attention back to Dani. “Now, let's see where our fish lady swam to.”

  
  


ººº§ººº

  
  


JT hadn’t been that deep in shit since doing basic camp training when he joined the Army. He thought he had left those days behind him, but apparently life had other plans for him. “Your ass better be alive when I find you, Bright,” he mumbled to himself, earning a look from the other two officers with him.

  
  


He gave them a look back, daring either of them to say anything. He had been awake for close to thirty hours now, his socks were soggy, and the tunnel was too damn short for a man of his height. To say that his patience was running short was like saying that New York was kind of a big city. He was aching for a fight.

  
  


Gil’s plan had sounded kind of nuts when the man had first mentioned it, more of a Bright sort of thing than the Lieutenant’s. Then again, they were all a little bit crazier after working with the profiler for all those months. If crazy was catching, Bright certainly was contagious.

  
  


Contagious or not, the kid was one of the team, which mean that he deserved all of their efforts in getting him back alive. Crazy plans were included in the package, it would seem.

  
  


No one had truly believed that the killer would have just deliver herself in a silver platter without some sort of escape plan. They were all betting on Victoria betraying them and giving them the slip as soon as she was in those tunnels. After that, there were only two places she would head to. If Malcolm and Joanna were, in fact, trapped inside those tunnels, they figured Victoria would head straight towards them. She seemed very attached to her victims and, even if Bright mattered nothing to her, the killer would want to make sure that her next mermaid was still alive.

If they were being held someplace else, Victoria would head straight back to the van where they had left the body bag. Hopefully, after Edrisa and her team were gone.

  
  


“Do you hear that?” One of the guys whispered, getting a nod from the others. The three of them stopped in their tracks, listening carefully. In the beam of the powerful flashlights, their eyes looked wide and spooked, like little kids around a campfire telling horror stories.

  
  


“I swear to God...if some crazy assed, pale faced, fucking _killer clown_ with wonky eyes jumps out from one of these tunnels...” JT whispered, blaming Tally for dragging him to see that damn movie. Now he couldn't step close to a rain water drain without feeling chills up and down his back.

Just as he was ready to call it a collective hallucination, the detective heard it again. A faint moan. The three of them reached out for their guns.

  
  


“Okay… either the tunnels are haunted, or there’s someone out there,” the detective surmised, not entirely ready to dismiss the whole ghost theory. “Hello?”

  
  


The moan came again, echoing an answer.

  
  


JT felt hope swelling inside his chest, violently clashing with steadily building fear. He knew that Victoria was on the other end of the tunnels, which meant that there was a very good chance that whoever was making that sound was one of her victims. “Bright, is that you?” he yelled out, moving towards the source of the noise. “You owe me a pair of new shoes, bro! Fancy shoes, with some dude's signature on them!” he went on, making idle conversation as they got closer. It was not a good sign that they had yet to hear a full word. The detective really hoped that was just because the person was gagged and not because of something nastier.

  
  


In all honesty, he was sick and tired of seeing people with their tongues cut out.

  
  


They all heard the sound of feet splashing against the water before a disheveled figure came running at them from one of the side tunnels. “Hold your fire!” he called out as the woman crashed against JT's chest with a whimper.

  
  


The detective peered down. It was hard to recognize the smiling figure of Joanna Kingsman in the mess of knotted hair, dirt covered face and snotty nose that he was now looking at. Nevertheless, there was no denying that this was the same woman. “Joanna...Miss Kingsman, I'm detective Tarmel and these are officers Tigger and Mills. We're with the NYPD,” he said, keeping his voice level and calm. He could feel the woman shaking against him, her body reacting like she had been submerged in ice. “You're safe now. We're getting you out of here, okay?”

  
  


The words, meant to calm her down and give some sense of safety, had the exact opposite effect. The woman gave a breathless scream, shaking her head from side to side, nearly collapsing in his hold.

  
  


The fine hair at the back of JT's neck rose to attention as he saw the woman's despair, still devoid of any concrete words. All he could think about was that piece of human flesh in one of Edrisa's drawers. “Miss Kingsman...can you speak?”

  
  


The woman pulled away from him a little, just enough to look up and meet his eyes. She shook her head, fresh tears running down well established pathways on either side of her face.

“That's okay, you're going to be okay,” he forced himself to say despite his anger, because nothing else would be acceptable. She was alive and he was going to make damn sure that she would stay that way now that they had found her.

  
  


Inside, JT cursed Victoria before he silently vowed to himself that he was not leaving those tunnels until that killer was back in their custody, headed for a life time behind bars. “Was there someone else there with you?” he asked gently, receiving a shy nod. “A man?” Another nod, this time followed by a low-key whine. JT's heart started racing at her reaction. It was more than sorrow, there was guilt in there as well. “Was he alive?” he forced himself to ask.

  
  


Joanna's face crumbled, lips trembling as fat tears poured down from her eyes. She bit her lower lip to stop herself from speaking, knowing that no words would actually come out.

  
  


Not wasting another second, JT fished his phone from his pocket. He quickly opened it and set it ready to take notes before handing it to her. Her hands were shaking so badly that the detective wondered how long it would take for her to drop the damn thing in the filthy water. The future condition of his phone, however, was not what was concerning him. JT just wanted her to hold on long enough to type what he needed to know.

  
  


_'I left him behind.'_

  
  


_'MY FAULT!'_

  
  


_'He was tied up.'_

  
  


_'I panicked!'_

  
  


_'You need to find him!'_

  
  


_'The water was rising so fast...'_

  
  


_'He's going to drown!'_

  
  


JT read each added line with a growing sense of dread. By the time she looked up from the phone to meet his eyes, the detective could not help but respect this woman. She had been put through hell, suffered an unbelievable amount of terror and pain, and yet here she was, concerned about the life of a complete stranger, feeling guilty because she had left him behind. “You did good, Joanna,” he assured the traumatized woman. “Now, before these tow gentlemen take you outside, can you point me in the right direction? Do you have any idea where the two of you were being held?”

  
  


It was a very long shot. If it weren't for the schematics on his phone, JT would have been utterly lost about ten times already. And he had the benefit of a flashlight.

  
  


Joanna had been walking those tunnels aimlessly and in the dark for an unknown amount of time. Damn, after all that she had been through, JT was surprised she was even coherent enough to type anything at all.

  
  


_'Upstream'_

  
  


_'Hurry!'_

  
  


The tall detective didn't need to be told twice. “Get her to the bus waiting outside,” he ordered the two men.

Leaving the rescued victim in the capable hands of the other two officers, JT ventured farther into the dark tunnels, knowing that he was literally racing against the clock. “Boss,” he called out, pressing on his comm. When no answer came from the other side, JT pressed harder, even though he was aware that strength had nothing to do with establishing a link. “Boss, do you read?”

“ _Go ah—ead, JT_ ,” Gil's broken voice sounded in his ear.

“We found Joanna Kingsman. She's alive,” the detective reported. From the other side, he could hear nothing but static. “Did you get that?”

“ _G--et wh—at?...we s--ill in per—s--uit--_ ”

JT snarled, resisting the urge to toss the useless comm against the floor and stomp on it like a four year old. Instead, he clicked on a different channel. “This is Tarmel. I've lost contact with Lieutenant Arroyo and detective Powell,” he warned the unit outside. “Try on your end, the comms don't seem to be reaching the deeper levels.”

“ _Roger that, detective_ ,” an unfamiliar voice replied him. “ _Tech support warned this might happen_.”

“Joanna Kingsman is alive and well, currently en route outside with officers Tigger and Mills,” he informed. He looked down at the schematics, trying to figure out his current position. “I'm on section 303-10B, moving North. Tarmel out.”

  
  


ººº§ººº

  
  


Malcolm had no idea if he was going forward, backwards, or simply moving in circles. Even moving in the same direction as the current, he had tried to pick the tunnels where the water level seemed lower. His plan had even succeeded for a certain amount of time, until he made one wrong turn and ended up with water up to his chin.

  
  


He was tired, aching, and desperately lost.

  
  


There came a point where even the hopelessly optimistic had to admit that they were screwed. And Malcolm was far from being an optimist. He was more of a consciously aware realist.

  
  


He wasn't going to find a way out on his own. Those tunnels could run for miles before he found one that led outside, and any manholes that he might have walked past would have been lost to him in the dark. Besides, how on Earth was he going to climb up a ladder with his hands tied behind his back?

Malcolm felt like a lab rat, trapped inside a maze where someone had forgotten to add a piece of cheese.

  
  


With his body on the verge of giving up on him, the profiler's mind turned to Jo. He shuddered to imagine the woman facing the same odds as he was, alone and frightened in the dark, doomed to wander around aimlessly until she either gave up or her body gave up on her.

  
  


Had Victoria even fed her since she had brought the poor woman to that place? Given her any water?

  
  


Malcolm had been there for such a short amount of time, and already he was feeling desperately thirsty. Of course, having a gapping hole on his side wasn't helping matters. He stopped for a moment, trying to catch his breath.

  
  


His lungs were burning, the constant stress and pull of both the water and his hands behind his back were doing no favors to his breathing. The profiler leaned against the wall, his head resting against the wet surface.

  
  


Water rushed around him, the only sound he could hear. More than hear it, Malcolm could feel it inside him, a constant murmur that had replaced the beating of his heart. He felt like he was slowly dissolving in the liquid.

  
  


The sound had been such a constant presence for the past few hours that, when it changed, Malcolm failed to notice it. It was subtle, like a note out of place in a long symphony. By the time he became aware that something was different, it was already too late.

  
  


Water galloped towards him like a herd of spooked, wild horses, frothing and gurgling like it had discovered a new hatred for him. Malcolm barely had time to take a deep breath before he was tossed against the wall and the tunnel filled with water to the ceiling.

  
  


ººº§ººº

  
  


“How the hell is she finding her way in these pitch black tunnels?” Dani mumbled. They had been following the red dot for more than half an hour and not once had they seen Victoria fumble her way. She seemed to know exactly where she was going.

  
  


Were it not for the powerful flashlights each of them was using, Dani and Gil would be completely blind and lost.

  
  


“Well, we know she's human, so let's rule out the ' _is able to see in the dark_ ' option,” the Lieutenant pointed out. Truth was, he had been wondering the same thing. Victoria had fallen off the grid over six months before her victims started to show up on the shore; it wouldn't be too much of a stretch to assume that she had been spending some, if not all, of that time in that place, walking those tunnels. If she was moving around without some sort of guide, there had to be something else to help her find her way. “Let me try something here,” he said, turning his flashlight off. “Kill yours too and hide that tracker's bright screen.”

  
  


Dani gave him a squinted look before obeying. As all sources of light flipped off, the tunnels immediately felt more oppressing. All that they could hear was each others' breaths and the steady trickle of water. “Are we looking for something in particular?” the detective whispered, finding herself unwilling to talk any louder, like her voice would disrupt some sort of hidden balance that the older man was trying to achieve.

  
  


“Do you remember the glow-in-the-dark victim that Edrisa showed us?”

  
  


It was hard to guess if the Lieutenant was joking or not, since she couldn't really see his face, but Dani was going to assume that he was dead serious. “Something about radioluminescence, yeah.”

  
  


They gave their eyes a few more seconds to adjust. Suddenly, like a dark veil being slowly pulled away, they began to see it. On the ceiling, above them, there was a bright dot of green paint. “Shit!” Dani let out. “So that's how she's doing it!”

  
  


Gil turned his flashlight back on. While the dots were a good way to find their way back, he felt safer f he could actually see where he was stepping. “She still moving?”

  
  


Dani turned her light on as well before looking down at the tracker. The red dot was standing still in the middle of the screen. “She stopped,” the detective announced. “Not very far from here. Looks like there's a large chamber there.”

  
  


“Let's go then!” the older man urged, starting at a sprint. If Victoria had stopped moving, that could only mean that she had reached Joanna and Malcolm. And while the woman was safe for the time being, there was no telling what Victoria had planned for the profiler.

  
  


There was light ahead of them in the tunnel. Gil silently beckoned Dani to slow down as both of them turned their lights off. There was no point in announcing their arrival.

  
  


Exchanging the flashlights for their weapons, Gil and Dani slowly moved forward. Everything was eerily silent.

  
  


Clinging to the side wall, the two officers inched closer and closer. From Gil's angle, all he could see was part of a large chamber with two floors where four tunnels met at the bottom of a set of access steps. He signaled Dani that he had no eyes on either the killer or the people she was holding. Standing on the other side, the detective silently told him she couldn't see anyone either.

  
  


Ideally, they would have called for backup, had the place surrounded before they made their move. But they were deep underground, and not even their radios seemed to be working properly. The last time JT had tried to talk to them, they had barely heard his voice and remained clueless about what he was trying to communicate. It was an impossible situation and they had no time to waste.

ººº§ººº

Malcolm was an okay swimmer. Grandma Milton had a large outdoor swimming pool at her summer house in the Hamptons, where both the Whitly kids had learned how to swim before they could even walk in a straight line.

There was something very reassuring and liberating about diving into a large pool of water when you had nothing but blue sky above your head. The calming sense that all the oxygen in the universe was at your disposal, just one hand stroke away.

  
  


In the dark, none of Malcolm's senses were working right. All that he could feel, hear, see and taste was water. He kicked with his feet, propelling his body up in the hope that there might still exist a small pocket of air between the current and the ceiling.

  
  


He opened his mouth, lungs screaming for attention. Instead of air, Malcolm gulped down a mouthful of water. It tasted like acid as it went down, making him gag and gasp in the same convulsing motion. There was no air to be taken. There was none left as the tunnel turned into a very large pipe.

  
  


Through the panic, Bright could feel the edges of unconsciousness circling him, like a hungry shark ready to take a bite. There was no point in continuing the fight, there was no way out for him.

  
  


His legs kicked against invisible foes as Malcolm's brain slowly realized that there was no more oxygen to be had. In the dark, where no one could see him, the profiler gasped one more time, water rushing inside like his body was the last territory to be conquered in those dark tunnels.

  
  


After that, he stopped kicking.

  
  


ººº§ººº

  
  
  


“There’s no one here,” Gil was forced to admit. “You sure this is the place?”

  
  


On the upper floor, there was one corner that certainly had a ‘lived in’ vibe to it. There were no curtains or planted vases, but there was a cot rolled up as well as an odd set of fishbowls and canned beans lined up against the wall. However, it was the piles of rolled fabric, resting against one of the walls, that gave them all the clues they needed to know that Victoria had been living there for some time. Large, industrial roles, like the ones they would find in a clothing factory or a tailor's shop.

  
  


“This is as far as we’re following her,” Dani informed him, a scowl on her face as she pointed to under the stairs where the orange jumpsuit and the set of chains lay discarded. “You think she knew?”

  
  


Gil shrugged, taking a step closer to the fishing bowls. “Either she didn’t like the color or she figured out we let her go too easily,” he pointed out. “We need to figure out where she went next. If this is her base camp, she might be keeping her prisoners close by.”

  
  


There was something black and hard as a rock in one of the bowls. Leaning closer to get a better look, the Lieutenant quickly recoiled in disgust as he realized that he was looking at a piece of mummified tongue.

  
  


“Hers?” Powell asked as she peered at what had startled the older man. Her face contorted turned slightly green as she caught a glimpse of the thing.

  
  


He backed away from it. “Maybe.” There was a picture of a smiling man under the bowl. Victoria’s dead husband. Gil wouldn’t completely discard the possibility that they might be looking at the late Jared's tongue, preserved for eternity. Had she kept it to... _talk_ with her dead husband?

  
  


“Argh...what is it with this woman and tongues?” Dani asked in disgust. She backed away from the grotesque souvenir and uncovered a pile of papers hidden beneath the rolled up cloth. At first glance, they looked like customers' files from a place called 'Dreamy Princess'. “Looks like you were right about the place she found her victims,” she let out, flipping through the pages. There were a couple of unfamiliar names in there, but she could recognize others as belonging to the victims they had identified so far. “She had everything in here...addresses, phone numbers...all of these women who bought wedding dresses in that store ended up signing up for being murdered.”

  
  


“Including Joanna Kingsman?” Gil asked as they took the stairs down. They needed to find out which tunnel Victoria had used to escape and figure out a way to warn JT about this development. Whatever they could find it there would be of importance later, when they got Victoria into a court. Right now, they just needed to find the people she had taken.

  
  


“According to these files, Joanna and three more women who went to the store after her, are all here,” Dani confirmed. “The last date coincides with Jared's death.”

  
  


“When she left the store,” Gil surmised, getting a nod from Dani. “Do you hear that?” the Lieutenant whispered, stopping at the bottom of the stairs, head tilted as he searched the tunnels for the source of the faint noise. “Sounds like dry thunder.”

  
  


Dani stopped as well, closing her eyes to better focus on the sound. The tunnel's acoustics played havoc with any noise, making everything sound too loud and coming from everywhere at once. “Whatever that is, I don't think it's dry,” she concluded. “That's water!”

  
  


As soon as the words left her lips, both of them realized the implications. Their eyes widened in fright, looking around, trying to figure out from which tunnel the torrent of rushing water was going to hit.

  
  


“Up the stairs! Now!” Gil ordered, pausing long enough to make sure that the young woman raced ahead of him.

  
  


There was no time to get to safety as gallons of water exploded into the chamber from two different tunnels at the same time, instantly flooding the first floor all the way to the last step of the staircase.

Dani desperately held onto the rail as she sensed the solid wall of water moving in like a tsunami towards them. Still on the bottoms steps, both Gil and Dani found themselves yanked sideways as the water hit them with the force of a moving trunk, pushing them under.

ººº§ººº


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is it, folks! Finally done!
> 
> I hope you have enjoyed yourself! I certainly did! To my wonderful and talented beta Jameena and my personal, talented writer and cheerleader, ProcrastinatingSab, all my love and gratitude...love you both, ladies!

ººº§ººº

  
  


If there was one thing that was certain to piss off JT Tarmel, it was a mission gone sideways. And the current one was going sideways so hard that it was starting to defy gravity in a very rude manner.

  
  


The radio in his ear fizzled and popped, but that was about as much as he got from the useless piece of equipment. He could communicate without problems with the units outside, but after that last failed attempt to tell Gil and Dani about Joanna, he couldn't reach them again. He could only assume that they were too far underground for the comms to reach them, and he refused to consider any other possibility.

  
  


Alone in those tunnels and without being able to contact Gil, JT realized that he was faced with a difficult tactical decision. He could keep on moving forward blindly, with no idea where Victoria was or where to find Malcolm, completely clueless on the others' progress...or he could head out, towards the one place he knew Victoria would be drawn: the body bag in the van.

  
  


ººº§ººº

  
  


Dani rolled over, moaning as her back hit the hard surface underneath her. For a moment, as she tried to get her bearings, the detective felt nothing but confusion and pain. She was soaking wet, her throat was scratchy and achy like she had spent the last couple of hours screaming, and her nose was so clogged it made her head hurt. Her heart was racing wildly inside her chest, and she had no idea why.

  
  


The detective opened her eyes, flinching as she found herself looking straight up at a glowing lamp encased in a metal cage. All of a sudden, she remembered what had happened and where she was. “GIL!”

  
  


Forcing herself to sit up, the young woman looked around in despair. The entire ground floor had been swiped clean as the water had come rushing through, reaching as high as the last step on the staircase. Gil had been standing right behind her as they had tried to escape to higher ground, but she couldn't see him anywhere. Her breath caught in her chest, panic rising at an alarming speed. She couldn't do this alone. “Gil?”

  
  


Dani forced herself to take a deep breath and calm down. She was shaking and her vision was swimming so badly that, even if her eyes swiped past Gil, her mind wouldn't have registered his figure. Carefully, she looked around again until she spotted the familiar shape of the older man. Gil's dark jacket was wedged against the entrance of the tunnel on the far side from where she stood. From the progressively lower level of water inside the chamber, Dani guessed that was where the water had been drained from the place. “Gil?” she called out again, concerned by his lack of response. The detective raced to him, her legs feeling like logs, dragging her down. Each step felt like a complete workout.

  
  


By the time Dani reached the Lieutenant, she was exhausted and completely out of breath. Kneeling down in a barely controlled fall, the detective rolled the man over, her arms shaking with strain. Gil coughed, water erupting from his mouth in a spurt of life.

  
  


“God...you scared the crap out of me,” she let out, unconsciously rubbing her boss's back as the Lieutenant spat out all the foul liquid that had found its way into his stomach.

  
  


“Wh-what the hell was that?” Gil sputtered, his voice sounding as raspy as hers. He took her offered hand, sitting up, his eyes wide and round as he took in the effects of the sudden torrent of water. “That was one hell of a toilet flush,” he whispered, dissolving into a fit of coughs that made her chest ache just from listening.

  
  


“I think...it might be the system's way of dealing with the incoming tides,” Dani voiced, sitting beside the Lieutenant, struggling to catch her breath. “You think the others were caught in it too?”

  
  


It was a terrifying prospect. In that moment, there were eight people inside those damn tunnels, and only one of them knew the layout well enough to have made a safe escape. Dani and Gil had been lucky to have reached that large chamber ahead of the discharge. If they had still been in the tunnel, their chances of survival wouldn't have been great.

  
  


“Oh, God! _Malcolm_...” Gil gasped, his voice but a whisper of pain and despair.

  
  


Dani looked down, hiding her own fear. “I'm sure he was nowhere near th-”

  
  


“No,” the Lieutenant stopped her, stumbling to his feet. “Malcolm!” he said again, pointing at a lump of clothing tussled against the wall under the staircase.

  
  


Powell nearly snapped in half as she turned around, searching for the profiler. She was on her feet and running even before she could fully process what she was seeing. Gone were any thoughts of pain and discomfort, of lack of breath or exhaustion. All that mattered was reaching Malcolm as fast as she could.

  
  


Bright wasn't moving. Dani fell at his side, terrified to reach out, worried he might crumble beneath her touch, like an illusion made of nothing more than good wishes and dust. In the back of her head, there was a loud alarm going off, one that was telling her that he was too quiet, eerily still in a way that screamed a grievous condition more permanent than unconsciousness.

  
  


Her hands hardly felt like her own as she extended her arms to touch his shoulder. His hands, she noticed, were torn and lax, tied behind his back. She pushed, turning him sideways, the position of his arms making it impossible to lay him flat on his back. Even before she leaned down to listen to his breathing, Dani could see that his chest wasn't moving.

  
  


Gil dropped on the profiler's other side, his face white as a ghost. He looked at her, his eyes begging for a glimpse of hope. Dani had none to offer.

  
  


Clumsy fingers wrapped around Malcolm's throat, searching for a sign of his beating heart. Once more, there was none to be found. The profiler's skin was cold and clammy, as devoid of life as the man himself. “God dammit, kid!”

  
  


There was no way to tell how long ago Malcolm's heart had stopped. He was cold to the touch, but then again, so were Gil and Dani. Neither of them was ready to just sit back and simply give up. “Find something to cut those damn ropes!” Gil ordered, bending down. It was an awkward position to give CPR, with Malcolm resting sideways, but it was the best that they could do until his hands were cut free.

  
  


Gil pushed the kid's head back as far as he could, pressing his chin down and pinching Malcolm's nose closed as he bent down to blow some air inside the profiler's slack mouth. The Lieutenant gave Malcolm's chest a sideways glance, pleased to see the upper half swelling under his ministrations.

  
  
  


In the distance, the Lieutenant heard the sound of glass breaking and Dani cursing. Her boots echoed across the metal staircase before she rejoined him holding a broken piece from one of the fishbowls. They exchanged a quick worried look before she set to work.

  
  


Gil was starting to feel drained, switching between taking a deep breath for himself and forcing some oxygen into Malcolm's lungs. So far, however, the only thing that he seemed to be accomplishing was making himself light headed.

  
  


“Come on, Powell! This is useless unless we start compressions soon!” Gil urged her. He knew that she was going as fast as she could, doing her best to get the bindings off, but it was not enough. Malcolm's lips were blue, and Gil couldn't remember if they had been like that before or if it was a recent development. Either way, it was not a good sign.

  
  


ººº§ººº

  
  


JT realized he had lost track of time when he emerged outside expecting to be blinded by the sun and instead found himself facing a sky filled with bright stars.

  
  


He would never confess how close he had come to radioing in for help, as he failed to find the exit in his first three tries. Eventually, he stumbled across a vaguely familiar tunnel and found himself running towards fresh air like a convicted man running towards freedom.

  
  


If it were up to him, JT would never set foot inside a sewer ever again.

  
  


There was no one outside this exit, and the detective figured it was one that had been previously flooded. Idly, he wondered where all that water had gone. He looked up, easily finding the circus of police car lights on the top of the cliff.

  
  


Everything seemed quiet enough. Perhaps too quiet.

  
  


The churn on his gut told him to maintain radio silence as he made his way to the cars. He knew that Tigger and Mills would have stick with Joanna on the ride to the hospital, keeping her safe, but there should be another pair of officers guarding the van, Mick and Terry. As JT drew closer, he realized that none of them were in sight.

  
  


JT reached for his gun, a bad taste taking over his mouth as he spotted a pair of black boots peeking out from behind one of the cars.

  
  


Crouching down, he stealthily inched closer until he could spot Terry's lax features. Relief flooded him as he stuck two fingers on the officer’s neck and found a strong, steady pulse. Just unconscious then. He couldn't spot Mick anywhere.

  
  


What he could see was Victoria, forcing the van’s door open.

  
  


“Freeze!” he called out, gun steady as he took aim at the woman. She had changed clothes and her chains were gone, but there was no mistaking who she was. “Step away from that van, nice and slow!”

  
  


In the split second it took the woman to turn and fire, JT only had time to mentally kick himself for not having checked if the downed officer was missing his piece. He ducked out of the way, but the eruption of fire and pain in his side told JT that he had moved a second too slow.

  
  


ººº§ººº

  
  


“ That  _ bitch _ !” Dani cursed, frustration making her voice sound unsteady and slightly unhinged. Or maybe it was the fact that she had just realized that managing to cut through the ropes had not been quite the victory she had been hoping for, as Malcolm's hands remained stubbornly secured behind his back. She leaned further down, finally spotting the zip tie that completed the set. “Who the fuck uses two sets of restraints?!”

  
  


Gil had no breath left to answer her. He just gave her a look that said to hurry up.

  
  


Blood slicked, Dani's fingers slipped on the jagged edges of her makeshift knife. She didn't let it stop her from sawing even harder, though, only wincing whenever a sharpened corner would nick Malcolm's wrists. It was appalling to watch the glass dig into his skin, expecting to draw blood and realize that none would be coming.

  
  


Because Malcolm was dead.

  
  


She yelled out in anger, the glass slicing one last time before the plastic zip tie tore apart. “Got it!” she alerted Gil, instantly moving as they worked to position Malcolm lying straight on the floor. Dani recoiled as she caught sight of his ashen face.

  
  


Statistical data floated around her mind, about how long it had already been, about how low the rate of successful CPR actually was, about possible brain damage if they actually managed to bring him back. All the anger and building frustration welled up inside her aching heart, exploding in the form of a powerful punch to the middle of Bright's chest.

  
  


The profiler's only reaction was a head roll to the side that had less to do with his will and more to do with gravity.

  
  


Ignoring her building panic, Dani positioned herself above his chest, fingers laced as she placed one hand on top of the other and started pressing down, counting under her breath. Her wet curls bounced up and down as she put all of her might into jump starting Bright's heart. “29...30!” she said out loud, sitting back on her folded knees as Gil leaned down and performed mouth-to-mouth.

  
  


The older man kept a hand on Malcolm's neck, waiting for that faint thread of a pulse to beat back against his fingers. Gil shook his head when he felt nothing.

  
  


Dani resumed her pumping. She was sweating by the end of the second set. “28...29...30!”

  
  


Gil closed his mouth over Malcolm's slack lips. Wet droplets of water from his hair mixed with the tears rolling down from the Lieutenant's eyes. “Come on, Malcolm,” he whispered after two more breaths. “Don't do this to me...don't do this to your mother.”

  
  


Dani remained silent as she pressed down, keeping a rhythm as steady and fast as she could. She was pretty sure she had already cracked one of the profiler's ribs, but for now that was the least of her concerns. She needed him to take a breath on his own, for his heart to jolt back to life, so he could harass her about broken ribs. She wasn't strong enough to deal with Bright's loss on her own or to offer any proper support to Gil. It was eerie how appropriate the man's name actually was: _Bright,_ keeping them from falling into darkness. “Breathe, dammit!” she let out, her hand closed into a fist as she punched his chest again.

  
  


This time there was a reaction. Malcolm's stomach muscles contracted as he tried to fold himself in half to escape the pain. He started coughing convulsively, a disturbing sound that was somewhere between a gasping fish and a dying cat.

  
  


Too stunned by the turn of events, Dani just stared as Gil forced Malcolm on his side. “That's it, kid! Let it all out,” he encourage, rubbing the profiler's back like he was a five year old who had eaten too much candy instead of a grown man who had been dead half a second before.

  
  


Malcolm didn't seem aware of their presence, moaning as he tried to push away from Gil's touch. His chest jerked again and more water mixed with bile emerged from his mouth. With his eyes still closed, it was impossible to tell how conscious the profiler really was.

  
  


“Dani,” Gil called, his eyes shifting momentarily from Malcolm to her. While one hand kept comforting the profiler's back, the other was firmly attached to his wrist, keeping a close watch on his tentative beating heart. “One of us needs to go outside, get the paramedics in here,” he voiced. His tone implied that there was no chance he was going to leave Malcolm's side anytime soon, even if the words left the option in the open.

  
  


But he was right, though. The radios weren't working, and Bright needed a lot more than chest compressions and mouth-to-mouth to get out of that tunnel alive. They could risk carrying him out, but they both knew that just as fast as his heart had restarted, it could go out again. “I'll go,” she offered, pretending to herself that there was a choice in the matter.

  
  


Even knowing that this was the only way, it still hurt to walk out on Gil and Malcolm. The Lieutenant looked gray under the feeble light, still reeling from their near-drowning. And Bright...he looked like someone who was barely on speaking terms with the world of the living. If his heart stopped again, Gil would have to deal with it on his own, all alone in that horrible place.

  
  


Fighting the tears that threatened to fill her eyes, Dani raced towards the same tunnel they had come from initially. Her phone was gone, and with it, the schematics of the sewer system. She would have to rely on Victoria's glowing ink and a lot of good luck to make it outside.

  
  


But, again, what other choice did she have when Malcolm's life and Gil's sanity rested in her hands?

  
  


ººº§ººº

  
  


JT cursed as he pushed his hand against the pain and felt a sticky, warm wetness coat his fingers. Tally was going to kill him when she found out that he had gotten himself shot!

  
  


He risked a glance around the bumper of the police car where he had taken cover. The car's lights were aimed right at the back of the van, giving him a clear view of the killer's movements, thinking that she would try and finish him off. The woman's priorities, however, laid elsewhere JT realized, as she continued to focus on the van rather than chase him.

  
  


Victoria finally managed to pry open the doors and climb inside. The detective smiled, knowing that this was his chance to catch her off guard. As soon as she opened that body bag...

  
  


JT pushed to his feet, fighting the wave of dizziness that hit as soon as he was vertical. Yup, Tally was definitely going to kill him...

  
  


Keeping one hand on his wounded side and the other on his gun, the detective shortened the distance between his hiding place and the van. In his mind, he was running a countdown.

  
  


Five...

  
  


Four...

  
  


Three...

  
  


Tw--

  
  


Inside the van, Victoria screamed in fury as she opened the bag and, instead of finding Melissa's body as she had seen before, found nothing but sand.

  
  


With the woman’s back to him, JT fired a warning shot into the bag. “Drop the gun!” he ordered. “Or the next one goes in your head!”

  
  


Victoria turned around, her eyes devoid of a single drop of rationality. She looked like a wild animal, injured and cornered. Dangerous.

  
  


“I said,” JT voiced as clearly as he could manage, eyes unwavering. “Drop. The. Gun. Now!”

  
  


The woman's eyes kept darting between the detective and the body bag filled with sand. She held the weapon firmly in her right hand, apparently too stunned to actually point it at JT, but the experienced detective was taking no chances.

  
  


“It's over, Victoria...Melissa is back at the morgue by now, and Joanna is on her way to the hospital,” he said, taking extra pleasure in letting her know how much her whole plan had failed. The only thing that he couldn’t gloat about was the profiler's rescue, but he had to trust Dani and the boss with that part.

  
  


Victoria hissed at the mention of the woman she had abandoned in the tunnels. She probably had plans to go back to her after sending Melissa on her way, or maybe she had expected the poor woman to die in that place, her body washing out to sea on its own.

  
  


“I'm not telling you again,” JT warned, his voice nothing more than a heavy growl. He couldn't keep this stalemate much longer. His vision was wavering in and out of focus and he could feel the wetness expanding from his waist to his left leg. This needed to be over in the next couple of seconds, or he wasn't sure he would be conscious to witness the ending.

  
  


Victoria's eyes flickered between him and the edge of the cliff nearby. JT tightened the grip on his weapon. There was a thirty foot drop over that edge with nothing but sharp rocks at the bottom. In the high tide, there would be some water there, but hitting it would be like winning the lottery. She didn't particularly strike him as suicidal, but then again, a killer’s mind didn't exactly work like a normal person's brain and he wasn't nuts enough to try and figure it out...like Bright would.

  
  


Still, it surprised him when she jumped out of the van and sprinted to the edge of the cliff. The detective barely had time to react.

  
  


JT fired a shot, the sound quickly followed by another that hadn't come from his gun.

  
  


Victoria gasped in pain, the momentum still carrying her body over the edge. The last glimpse the detective had of her falling woman was her panicked look as her feet lost contact with solid ground.

  
  


The detective risked a glance back, surprised to see Dani holding her gun out. She looked like she had just taken a dive in the ocean, herself. Dani, in turn, took in his stance, favoring his injured side, both of them silently acknowledging how much of a shitty day they were having before walking to the edge and glancing over.

  
  


It was pitch black at the bottom. All they could hear was the roar of the ocean beating against the rocks. “She's dead,” JT hissed, making it sound more like wishful thinking rather than certainty. “Right?”

  
  


“We'll deal with that later, “ Dani said, a note of urgency in her voice. “Where are the paramedics?”

  
  


“They took Joanna to the hospital,” JT informed her. “ _You found Bright?”_ he asked at the same time that Dani spurted a “ _You found the victim?_ ”

  
  


They nodded simultaneously, each too glad at the good news to noticed the annoyingly repetitive synchrony they seemed to be stuck in. 

It lasted exactly half a second before JT realized that, from Dani's current state, maybe the news wasn't as great as he had initially hoped. “Is he... _ alive _ ?” he asked with a frown. He figured the young woman would have looked a bit less stressed and a whole lot angry than she did if the profiler was dead. Besides, they were one team member short. “Wait...where's the boss?”

  
  


“Gil stayed with Bright,” she said in a hurry, already walking to the car. There was a radio in there, hopefully one that worked. “He's alive for now, but we need to get him to a hospital fast,” Dani explained as she gave the officer sitting against the car a once over. Terry looked at her, giving her a thumb up as he looked more embarrassed than injured. She leaned inside the car and flipped the radio channel on. “This is detective Dani Powell, requesting immediate medical assistance. I have two officers down, one of them in risk of cardiac arrest. Over.”

  
  


“ _ Roger that. One bus is already one the way. Sending a second unit _ ,” Central replied. “ _ ETA for unit one in three minutes. _ ”

  
  


“Two?” JT asked, frowning in deep concern. Dani hadn't mentioned anything being wrong with the boss, but then again, his attention was a bit fuzzy. “Is Gil injured, too?”

  
  


Powell gave him a look that was somewhere between worried and amused. When her eyes shifted to his injured side, JT's lips formed a silent 'O' as it sank in that the extra bus was for him. “I'm fine,” the detective shrugged.

  
  


“Sure you are,” Dani agreed, pushing his hands away to take a look for herself. It looked mostly like a flesh wound, but it was still bleeding. “Just lemme grab the medical kit anyway, for fun,” she added, moving to the back of the car. She handed a pressure bandage over to JT, knowing how much the other man hated to be fussed over. “Hold it tight...I'll need to guide the paramedics back to Gil and Bright.”

  
  


Already they could hear the sirens, singing at a distance, getting closer and closer.

  
  


Dani took a deep breath, the salty tang of the ocean breeze pushing away the oppressive feeling that had taken over her chest ever since entering those tunnels. It was fresh and pure, cleaning her body and soul from Victoria's machinations and the tunnels' putrid touch.

  
  


JT was going to be fine.

  
  


Gil was going to be fine.

  
  


Malcolm, despite all odds, _had_ to be fine. The only difference now, was that she could actually make herself believe that.

  
  


EPILOGUE

  
  


For once, they were in the hospital free of all fear of being kicked out. Because hospitals were not in the business of kicking out their patients.

Reluctant patients.

  
  


Both Gil and Dani had been admitted as a precaution. After admitting to have been underwater long enough to lose their senses, there was no stopping the battery of tests that both were forced to endure to prove that they were okay-ish. In addition, Dani had come out of it with a couple of souvenir stitches to her cut up hand.

  
  


JT's wound, despite being non-life threatening, was not going to glue itself back together. So, under much protest, he had been wheeled to surgery.

  
  


And Malcolm...

  
  


Dani had raced back through those tunnels like a woman on a mission, barely stopping to make sure that the two paramedics, juggling all of their equipment, had been running right behind her. She had expected to reach the large chamber and find Gil washed away in tears, or desperately performing CPR once again.

  
  


Instead, she had found him sitting in the middle of the space, Malcolm's head lying on his lap, talking quietly with the unconscious profiler. It had felt almost intrusive to interrupt.

  
  


Neither of them had said a word as the paramedics ripped apart what was left of Bright's shirt and attached the large patches of the automated external defibrillator to his chest. 'Just in case' one of the medics had said, aiming for reassurance but utterly failing as he placed an oxygen mask over the profiler's face.

  
  


There was a wound on Malcolm's left side, one caused by the knife they had stored in evidence. Against his pale, washed out skin, the red cut seemed almost innocuous, a harmless little thing. It was smaller than the scar left behind by John Watkins' handiwork, they noticed grimly. Inches apart, like it was a competition.

  
  


Oddly enough, the stab wound didn't seemed to be the paramedics biggest source of concern where it came to the profiler's health, as both of them kept looking at his heart monitor and injecting things in the hastily fixed IV line. It seemed like an eternity had passed until they deemed the profiler good enough to go.

  
  


After that, it had all become a blur of getting Malcolm out of that sewer, securing the crime scene as best as they could, and rushing to the hospital.

  
  


The next time they all saw each other, each was parading a similar model of the latest trend in hospital fashion. It was the saddest pajama party ever known to mankind, even if Dani was having a hard time keeping a straight face as she caught her boss in the blue and white cotton attire, entirely forgetting that she was wearing exactly the same thing.

  
  


On his bed, still loopy from anesthesia, JT flat out laughed as he spotted them sneaking into his room. “Looking good, boss,” he slurred, showing more teeth in that one grin than either of them had ever seen in all the years they had known the man. “You two look like a couple of NYPD patrol cars!”

  
  


Gil sighed, looking up for a second, as if he was searching for guidance and patience somewhere in the ceiling. “JT, I called Tally,” he announced instead. Instantly, the detective sobered up, frowning at him.

  
  


“Why did you go and do _that_?” he asked, sounding a bit betrayed and actually frightened. “She's going to _kill me_ ,” he whispered, perhaps a bit too loud.

  
  


“Because she's your wife, and she loves you,” Gil reminded him. “And she would kill me if I kept my mouth shut,” he added.

  
  


“...wuss,” JT hissed under his breath, going back to sleep. He missed the surprised look Gil gave him.

  
  


Dani smirked, already regretting having no recorded evidence of the stern-faced detective calling their boss a 'wuss'. “Have you heard anything about Bright?” Powell asked the Lieutenant, knowing that it was going to be a while until JT was able to take part in an adult conversation. “Has he woken yet?”

  
  


Gil shook his head. “They were still doing some tests last time I checked,” he confessed, all mirth gone from his voice as he was brought back to the harsh reality. 

Malcolm had drowned. 

Technically, the kid had been dead when they found him. It was somewhat understandable that the doctors were concerned about how that had affected both his lungs and his oxygen deprived brain. “They said it was a good sign that we managed to get his heart pumping again...a straight out miracle, I think was the expression they used,” Gil added, sounding less than pleased with the doctor's assessment.

  
  


A miracle would have been walking into those tunnels and finding the kid alive and unscathed. The sheer dumb luck of stumbling across his dead body in a sewage washout was pretty fucking far from a miracle in Gil's book.

  
  


Dani found herself reaching out and placing a hand on the older man's tense shoulder. Somehow, in the absence of the turtleneck sweaters and heavy coats, he seemed more approachable. Almost fragile. “Bright has more brain cells than your average human,” she pointed out, only half joking. “If there is anyone who can afford to lose a few, it's him.”

  
  


Gil gave her a sad smile. She had a point, after all. “Jess will let us know as soon as there's news,” the Lieutenant informed her, casually, his relationship with Malcolm's mother a secret that had no chance to thrive as everyone witnessed Jessica's care and devotion to the Lieutenant during his recovery. 

Gil's heart had been deeply divided between waiting for Malcolm to wake up and making sure that JT and Dani were out of danger. In the end, it had been Jessica who pushed him away, recognizing his need to take care of everyone under his command. “The only body they found at the bottom of the cliff was Mick, the missing officer at the scene. Looks like she pushed him after rending Terry unconscious.”

  
  


Dani looked up, apprehensive. Not only had they lost one fine officer, but the killer’s body was still unaccounted for. “She died,” she assured him and, in part, herself. “There was no way anyone could have survived that fall.”

  
  


Gil licked his lips, looking pensive. “We've seen weirder,” he pointed out. “But if her body washed away in the tide, she will probably end up in the same place that her victims did. We just need to wait and see.”

  
  


Dani nodded, sitting by JT’s side. Poetic justice. “She's dead.” 

She had to be.

  
  


“Crime scene found some more stuff in the gallery,” the Lieutenant went on. It was easier for them to think about the case than wondering how much of Malcolm would remain when he woke up. “Apparently there were some journals that we missed. Bright will have a field day reading those...”

  
  


Gil grew silent, his eyes avoiding her gaze. He looked guilty, like he was daring fate by assuming that Malcolm was going to wake up and be the exact same person as before. That he was going to take a look at those journals and unravel all of Vitoria's mysteries.

That he was going to wake up at all.

ººº§ººº

The salt water slapped against the sandy shore like two lovers, teasing each other with gentle, whispered touches and kisses that carried the promise of so much more.

Malcolm could feel the soft sand beneath his feet, pillowing his toes at every step. There was a fresh breeze caressing his skin, pushing his hair back and coating his face with tiny pebbles of salt.

Seagulls hovered above the crystalline water, taking advantage of the rising air currents and drafts to hang about, like grey scribbles painted in the blue sky. They called at one another, squawking like they had something important to say.

“He promised we would be together forever,” a woman said instead, her voice gravely compared to the gulls.

The profiler turned around, startled by the one sound that didn't fit that iddilic milieu. He found himself looking at the familiar face of the woman he and his team had been chasing across New York. The killer looked younger, her blond hair tied in a neat braid that rested against her left shoulder. She was smiling at him.

Somehow, none of that struck him as odd or out of place. Not even the fact that her voice had sounded so normal, instead of the recorded, impersonal voice of before. In her summer dress, with her toes playing with the loose sand, the woman looked at home. Content.

“He broke his promise to you,” Malcolm guessed. “You felt betrayed.”

“I knew he was getting sick,” she went on, her pale eyes searching the quiet water for answers. “I warned him, but he wouldn't listen...”

Malcolm followed her gaze. There was something jumping in and out of the water at a distance, splashing sounds that felt like dry thunder, white foam forming on the surface of the sea in their wake. “All those women...”

“They were about to fall for the same trap, vow the same empty promises,” the woman voiced, emotion clouding her voice. “I saved them from having their hearts broken.”

“By turning them into mermaids,” he added. He squinted against the glare of the sun on the reflective water. Whatever was playing in the water had a big tail, making him think that perhaps those were dolphins. Or whales. He hadn't seen a dolphin since he was five, at his grandparents beach house in the Hamptons...

“Men make promises that they can't keep,” she went on. “Lure us into feeling safe only to abandon us in the end.”

“Your husband didn't abandon you,” Malcolm reminded her. “He was sick.”

“I couldn't bear to hear his screams at night any more,” the woman confessed, her eyes filling with tears. “He was in so much pain, but all I could think of was making him shut up.”

“So you made him shut up,” the profiler added for her.

She didn't answer him, her attention turning towards the sound of music. Malcolm followed the sound as well. It sounded like singing, a choir composed solely of female singers. It was so beautiful and peaceful...

There was a young man, dressed in a fine suit, standing by the shore. He was smiling, looking towards the water eagerly. By his side stood another man, a white collar on the neck of his black dress shirt, holding a thick book in his hands. A priest.

The sound of splashing water was closer now and Malcolm looked at the sea. There was something swimming towards the shore, a white tail playing hide and seek with the tame waves.

As it rose from the water, Malcolm could see that he had been wrong. It wasn't a dolphin. Or a white whale.

It was a woman dressed with a long, white tail gown. A wedding dress.

At first, the profiler was confused, because not only had she emerged from the water like a siren coming from the depths of the sea, but also because she looked exactly like Eve. Eve...who had drowned.

Looking closer, however, he could spot the differences. This woman was taler, her hair a darker shade of blond. And her eyes...they were smiling, happy as she found the young man waiting for her at the shore. It suddenly dawn on the profiler that he was looking at Jo and her future husband.

As she moved closer, walking past him like he wasn't even there, Malcolm realized what the biggest difference between Jo and Eve was. Despite all the time they had spent together and the feelings that they had professed for one another, Eve had never looked at him with the same kind of unbound love that Jo had in her eyes as she looked at the man on the shore.

Eve had liked him and the idea of belonging to a family...and in return, he had liked Eve and the sense of normalcy that her presence brought to his life. But none of those feelings had ever come close to being called love. In all truth, they had been in love with the _idea of being in love..._ not with each other.

“Jo gets her happy ending,” the killer mumbled, sounding unpleased with the turn of events. “What about us?”

Malcolm looked at the cool, blue water, licking at his feet. The sun was beating down mercilessly against the nape of his neck, giving birth to all the sweat currently running down his back.

Far away, chasing the horizon line, he could see more of the big, white tails splashing in and out of the water. If he listened closely, he could hear them sing. The killer's mermaids.

By his side, the woman started walking, her gait unfaltering as she stepped over the waves like they were nothing but tiny bumps on the road. She didn't stop until the water reached her waist. “Don't pity me,” she said, throwing a look back at him. “Don't forget I stabbed you,” she added with a wink before dipping into the water.

Malcolm recoiled, folding on himself as he felt a sudden flash of pain in his left side. He looked down, mesmerized at the sight of fresh red blood dripping down from under his ribs to the waistband of his pants. He blinked, looking up, searching for the mysterious woman.

Bright could not quite believing his eyes as, instead of the blond woman, he saw nothing more than a big, fish tail emerging from the same place where the killer had disappeared under the surface. It rose up in the air, impossibly large, the tip of the fins almost touching the sun. It flapped down against the water, creating a wave bigger than the others.

The profiler barely had time to react before the wave crashed down on top of him.

ººº§ººº

Malcolm woke up soaking wet. He licked his lips, fully expecting to be met with the salt tang of sea water. Instead his tongue raced across dry, cracked skin.

“About time you woke up!”

Despite the harsh words, the voice sounded absolutely filled with happiness over such a simple accomplishment. He looked over, finding his mother sitting by his side, holding on to his hand. “Ho-How long?” he asked, his voice as cracked as his lips. He had been dreaming about water. It felt strange to wake up parched.

Jessica dropped his hand, reaching over to somewhere beyond his field of vision, her hand returning with an shiny ice chip between her fingers. She slipped it past his lips wordlessly, a gesture of feeding and tending that she had had no need to use for over thirty years, but one that was never out of practice for a mother. “Two weeks in a comma, plus the extra one they were _forced_ to keep you in a comma because your lungs were too stubborn to get over an simple infection,” she informed, sounding half offended over the fact that he had been sick. “Your hair looks in terrible need of a good trim, son,” she pointed out fortuitously, pulling a lock behind his ear.

Malcolm cherished the freshness of that ice chip on his tongue, barely taking notice of what his mother was saying over the bliss happening inside his mouth.

He was having a hard time ordering his memories, but Malcolm was pretty sure he wasn't supposed to be alive. In fact, he remembered very clearly taking his last breath inside those water filled tunnels. There were so many questions floating around his mind that it was a challenge on its own to pick one to ask first. His mother, oblivious to all of that, was still talking, some comment on the caveman aspect of his beard that completely escaped Malcolm's comprehension.

“Wait...you do know who I am?” his mother finally paused, looking at him sideways, as if the skewed view provided her with a better insight into his head. “Because the doctors did mentioned something about oxygen and your brain and that--”

For half a second, Malcolm entertained the idea of pretending that he didn't remember a thing. That he had forgotten who she was, his name and crappy life, that his father was a serial killer, that his sister was in jail for murdering the man who had tried to destroy their family, that his mother was chronically heartbroken and that his girlfriend was dead. For the other half of that second, he was angry at the stolen opportunity. Had his brain truly been damaged by the lack of oxygen, he could have in fact woken up to complete oblivion, free to start over. The second was over by the time he accepted the bitter truth. “Don't worry, mother...I'm still all here,” he confessed, perhaps with less enthusiasm than one would expect under the circumstances. “More or less.”

Jessica sighed in relief, picking up his hand again. “Good...amnesia is _such_ a cliché, don't you think?”

“Gil? The others?” Malcolm asked instead of agreeing or explaining to her how wonderful clichés could be.

“They're around, hovering,” she informed him. “They'll be happy to know you're back.”

Malcolm closed his eyes, bitterly thinking how alone they would be in that sentiment.

ººº§ººº

An elaborate piece of thick, white paper landed on Malcolm's chest, making him cross his eyes as he looked down. “What's this?” he asked, silently watching as the team filtered into the room. JT was walking in a slightly stiff manner that suggested that he was in pain. Dani had an old bandage in her right hand, one badly needing changing. And Gil...he looked older, utterly tired despite the bright smile on his face.

“A wedding invitation,” Dani explained. “Like sleeping beauty, you woke up just in time to attend the ball,” she added with a wink, carefully butchering as many fairytales as she could.

The profiler frowned. He was pretty sure that JT and Tally were already married and Gil and his mother...she would have certainly mentioned something, wouldn't she? “I don't know anyone getting married,” he pointed out, even as he opened the invitation, quickly going over the names. _Joanna Kingsman and David Baptista._

Jo.

“Pretty sure this date was two weeks ago,” Malcolm let out in confusion. He had been pretty lost upon waking up, but since then he was sure about his day and month.

“Fancy invitation like that,” JT pointed out. “It would have been a shame to throw them away just because they had to postpone the ceremony a couple of weeks due to _unforeseen_ circumstances,” the detective explained, stressing the unforeseen part. They all knew who he was talking about.

Malcolm licked his lips. It was the question that had been playing on his mind since he had opened his eyes. And now that the answer was finally within his reach, he wasn't sure he wanted to know. “Did you catch her?”

There was a pause, as JT looked at Dani before the two of them looked over at Gil. Malcolm realized that the answer was bad enough that they needed guidance. “We're pretty sure she's dead,” Gil supplied, scratching his goattee.

“ _Pretty sure_?” Malcolm parroted, sitting straighter in his bed. The stab wound by his side complained as he used muscles that weren't meant to be used so soon, but the profiler was a professional at ignoring his own body tells and warnings. “As in-you have no idea where she is?”

“That's not true,” Gil rushed to assure him. “Both JT and Dani shot her, we found traces of blood. And she fell down a cliff. Into a very rock-filled shore,” he numbered the reasons. “I'd say we're one flashy explosion away from overkill.”

The profiler nodded, even though a flashy explosion would have been more reassuring than eternal doubt hanging over their heads. “You guys figured out why she was doing it?”

“Turns out you were right about her,” Gil announced with a certain lack of enthusiasm. “She did kill her husband. We found a mummified tongue amongst her belongings that proved to belong to him,” he added, shuddering as if remembering finding the macabre thing. “They found evidence of large quantities of arsenic in the tissue, but without exhuming the body it's impossible to tell for how long she had been doing it.”

“Official cause of death was complications due to liver cancer,” Dani pitched in. “But-”

“Long term ingestion of arsenic can cause liver cancer too,” Malcolm finished for her. It was a reasonable doubt to ponder, but it didn't fit Victoria's profile. “Wait...she kept _his tongue_?”

Gil did shudder that time around, sharing a look with Dani. She looked a bit green around the gills. “Don't ask about the tongues,” she advised.

Malcolm nodded, not really eager to touch the matter either. He remembered all too clearly Jo's disfigured mouth and the despair in her eyes. He grasped the invitation in his hands. It was good to know that the woman was moving on with her life, denying the killer the pleasure of ruling over her existence. “And the victims?”

“Brides to be,” JT answered promptly. “All of the victims bought their dresses in the same place, where our killer happened to work. Every time a blond woman had the misfortune to walk through those doors--”

“She became a target,” Malcolm pitched in. “Do you know why? Did any of you talk to Victoria?”

The profiler in him was screaming at the missed opportunity. A genuine female serial killer and the only thing he had managed to get from her had been a few pre-recorded words on a tape before she stabbed him.

“Bro, there was no talking to that bi--” JT begun. He still hadn't forgotten the fact that Victoria had actually shot him.

“We have every thing recorded and waiting for you...when you get out of here,” Gil quickly cut the conversation short, before they spent the next couple of hours discussing the case.

“Every thing but her body,” Malcolm stated, bitting his lower lip. From the defeated expressions on their faces it was clear that none of them was all too happy with the uncertainty. “So, she could still be alive?”

“Our best theory is that her body was dragged by a different current and instead of ending up in the same place as her victims, Victoria just drifted out to sea.”

Malcolm blinked. “Victoria,” he said, tasting the word in his lips. It robbed some of the darkness away to finally know her name. “So, we're going with ' _drifted out to sea_ '?”

“Best we can do for now, kid,” Gil let out, finally nearing his bed. He seemed oddly fixed on the profiler's chest, his face contorting in pain as if he was recalling something nasty. “How're you feeling?”

“Bored,” Malcolm confessed. Were it not for the lack of street clothes, he would have made his escape hours ago. His mother, however, had refused to fetch him anything decent to wear until all the doctors in the hospital agreed that he was okay to go. Or perhaps it was just _his_ doctor, but for the trapped man, it amounted to the same. “Say... you don't happen to have any spare clothes in your car, do you?”

JT frowned, looking at Dani and then at Gil before returning his gaze to the man on the bed. “Which of us?”

“Honestly...any of you,” Malcolm huffed in despair. “At this point, I just want a pair of pants, but I'll settle for a skirt. Some shorts. A towel. Anything!”

“Ah... and here we were, thinking that he wouldn't be all there,” Dani said sarcastically, throwing a stinky look at the pissed profiler. “He's considering leaving the hospital wrapped in a towel, so I'd say we have nothing to worry about the state of his mind!”

“Settle down,” Gil called out. “You're not going anywhere until they give you a clean bill of health. You scared the crap out of us, kid!”

Malcolm sobered up. His mother had been helpless about the details surrounding his rescue, but he was good enough to see the tell tale clues in his team.

He had died, and at least one of them had brought him back to life. The broken rib on his left side was very specific to chest compressions done wrong or under pressure, something that a professional would not cause. From the way Gil kept looking at him and Dani's extra layer of sarcasm, Malcolm was willing to bet that the two of them had been the ones responsible for bringing him back to life.

JT was meeting his gaze head on, so there was no sense of misplaced guilt there. But he had been injured by Victoria before he managed to shoot her. The Tarmel baby could have been born without a father because of him...

“Thank you,” Malcolm whispered, suddenly overwhelmed by the lengths those three had gone to get him back. “I--”

“--will stay put and behave,” Gil finished for him. “Which is all the thank you we require, go that?”

Malcolm smiled, suddenly overwhelmed by the sense of belonging filling his heart. “One hundred percent!”

Gil returned his grin with a one of his own. “Should have said ninety, kid,” he added with a wink. “One hundred I know you're lying.”

The end

**Author's Note:**

> No TRUE mermaids were harmed in the making of this story! I'm looking at you, ProcastinatingSab!


End file.
